Fusing schedule thick slab glass

[tomsfoolery]

I have an old project where I combed  a sheet cut into 1 1/2″ strips stacked and made a pattern bar. This was done a couple of years ago . It was spectrum glass. I had a block 1 1/2″ x 1 1/2″ by 6″ long.

I cut the slab in half and I want ti fuse it together to have a block 1 1/2″ x 3″ high by 3″ long. I make rather large pendant using entirely end grain (much like wood the apperance of it stacked is really cool. I usually fire my individual strips to 2 1/2″ tall in my pattern bars. With this is so much smaller I have no idea from a couple of years ago. I am at a lost on what kind of schedule I would need to fuse 2   1 1/2″  x 1 1/2″ blocks together. I always fire very conservately but this is beyond my guess. I figure from start to finish it would probably take a couple of days at least. Annealing schedule is no problem its the warming and holding on the way up thats got me puzzled a bit..

If anyone has any idea I would appreciate input. I am not sure if I need to stay 50 degrees an hour or if I could go 100 and stop and hold often to make sure it gets heated through the entire slab.

This is an example of what I am trying to recreate pendant was about 2 1/2″ tall

 

Thanks Tom

[gizzmogirl]

Couldn’t you stack the slabs and lay them on their side to fire, so that it is 1 1/2″ thick? I do not know what you are going for, if you want the top slab to flow down into the first from above or just tack them together so they are a single slab. Annealing a 1 1/2″ slab would be considerably faster. I have a chart I found on a Spectrum website some time ago for annealing thick slabs (I can’t find it there now). Below is their reccommended schedule for a piece 3″ thick:

Ramp  Temp Hold (minutes)

100 1250 225

100 1465-1500   (variable)

AFAP 930 720

3 775 120

5.4 600 30

18 100 0

I have not done the math to see how long that would take, probably a week!

Sarah

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