Slumping is a term that describes what glass does when it is heated just enough to become soft and change shape, but not enough melt or fuse. Slumping temperature is around 1200 to 1345 degrees.
Fusing occurs when two or more layers of glass are melted together and become one. Fusing happens anywhere from 1350 to 1500 degrees Fahrenheit. The fusing process is continuous and must be watched to get the desired amount of intermingling between the two layers of glass.
Let me show you how to weave glass.
- Find your glass colors you to work with and cut to size
- Arrange bars on treated kiln shelf or thin fire paper.
- Lay glass strips or rods across the bars or slumping mold fire to 1280 degree and hold until desired slumping is achieved. Typically, 20 minutes of hold will be required.
Weaving is an art that assumes the materials used are flexible. Yarn and thread bend easily. People who weave baskets soften the fibers by soaking them. But how does one weave something that is not flexible at all and, if stressed, will break?
Weaving Glass
Tracy Harris Gallery
- Once the glass is cool, I wash it to remove traces of the burned fiber paper and kiln wash.
- I lined up the nine strips of slumped warp glass on a clear piece of base glass. Flipping over every other piece of warp glass to create the figure-eight spacing. After the warp is in place, I slid the glass strips in from the side. I carefully positioned all of the pieces onto the base.
- This whole thing (woven strips, clear glass backing, and decorative accents) is placed on another piece of fiber paper in the kiln.
- Remove slumped glass strips and flip every other slumped strip to create a channel to run unslumped glass strips or rods through.
- Tack fire or slump the newly woven glass strips to create woven glass projects.
Actually, it’s not difficult if you think about
- Looking at the weaving from the side, the even and odd warp threads form a shape like a continuous row of figure eights laying on their sides, with each weft stick slipped into a hole in the figure eight.
- The weaving is done, but my plate is not quite finished yet. Instead of a flat plate, I want to create one with a graceful curve.
- The last step is to slump the woven glass sheet onto a mold that has the graceful curve.
- The fused weaving is placed onto the prepared mold and it goes into the kiln for the third and final time.
The photographs shows a piece of warp glass that has been bent in the kiln and a piece of unbent weft glass. The two pieces remain the same length despite the bending because the warp-thread strip stretches as it is shaped by the heat.