Monday, January 07, 2008

Another Scary Machine Conquered!


This is a pic of my glass saw. I got it for my birthday way back in the beginning of November. Today I watched the dvd AGAIN, reread through the instructions, finished it's assembly and....
VOILA! I cut glass. It is not as fast as using a regular manual glass cutter, but it is capable of cutting in any direction and is very accurate doing intricate cuts. it has a water reservoir under the white table with a pump so your glass stays lubricated and you don't wear out the diamond blade to quickly. It took me a while to figure out how to insert the blade onto the machine, but now that I understand that it is SUPPOSED to take a big press of the finger to pop it in, it seems easy. I was worried when I turned it on - is the blade seated correctly? is it supposed to be noisy? what if it jumps out or the blade breaks? But it all went easy - and it cuts glass great! I did wear a dust mask and goggles. ...and a good thing too - that tiny wet glass goes flying everywhere!

These are the bottoms of some "eyeball" pendants. I also cut out some white roundish centers. I glued these two pieces together with glastac, and then i topped that with a small black round piece of glass. No pics of that, yet, cause it's still in the kiln annealing. oh, yeah....i fused it in the kiln at 1490, full ramp, with a hold for 11 minutes. I've already cut out copper circles with the centers cut out (they look like washers, but are really thin) and coated them with boric acid solution. Tomorrow, I will put those over the black eye irises and then put some dichroic paper on the sides and then top it all with clear glass. Then i will fuse again!

1 comment:

Joanne Huffman said...

How incredibly cool is this! I can hardly wait to see the photos of your eyeballs. You really are doing well with the word "completion." What a cool tool. How thick can it cut through? I wish I could come over and play...

Joanne