Gum Arabic

[ziads1]

Has anyone tried mixing Gum Arabic with fine frit powder to make a maleable product?I’m wondering if you could make a clay like substance thicker than using cmc? Any ideas?  

[rgilbert]

Linda Steider sells a seaweed-based binder on her site http://www.steiderstudios.com/glass-tools-supplies.html that might come out to be less expensive than gum arabic. I don’t know if that’s going to do the trick, but you can email her. I bought a sheet of kelp that is used as an adhesive in papermaking and haven’t quite gotten to experiment with it myself.

Roxane

[Vernelle]

I haven’t used gum arabic, but have used Linda Steider’s product.  I took her class at Glass Expo a few years ago.  If you go to her website, you will see what all can be done with it.

Linda is very helpful and can answer your questions.

Vernelle

[ziads1]

Thanks Roxanne and Vernelle,I’m going to try Linda’s seaweed. Bev

[bookie13]

I’ve tried them all! CMC, kelp starch, Gum Arabic, corn starch, Potato starch and several others. Basically the CMC works better than most and as well as any. They are all vegetable starches.

CMC is also a cooking and baking addative, so no problem with toxicity (non that I know of with any of the starches)

CMCs big advantage is cost. You can buy it for $3 or $4 per pound of powder at any pottery supply house. That is a almost s lifetime supply for most users.

 

I’ve taught Glass Clay for 3 years now and have 2 examples on this site. It is an incredibly flexible and enjoyable material to work with. On my website I have a whole page dedicated to Glass Clay examples.

Barry Kaiser

http://www.kaiserglass.com

Glass Classes:  kaiserglass.com/classes.html

 

[ziads1]

Thanks Barry, Bev

[Author]

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