Sometimes jewellery pieces come out of the kiln with imperfections that need to be ground
away.
You
can do a quick shaping on the conventional grinder and then fire
polish. However, you will not get a fire polish at a low enough
temperature to avoid distorting the piece. The way to get a fire
polished surface or edge is to make the edge less rough before
putting the glass into the kiln.
After
you shape the pieces on the grinder, make sure you scrub them well to
remove any particles created by the grinding process. Dry them and
then cover the rough areas with a white paint marker.
This will indicate when you have removed the scratches caused by the
previous rougher grinding.
Get
out your wet and dry sandpapers. Start with the most coarse (about
200) and work the ground area until the paint has been removed. Keep
the sandpaper and the area being worked damp. When all the white
paint has been sanded away, wash, dry, paint and go to the the next
finer grit. Repeat this with progressively finer grits – normally
use the grit number twice the previous grit (larger numbers indicate
finer grits).
Normally,
going down to 400 or 600 grit will be enough to enable a fire polish
at a low enough temperature to avoid distortion of your piece. This
heat range will be at a low temperature tack fuse.
This
smoothing process does not take very long and is much cheaper than
buying several finer grinding bits - most grinder bits are 60 to 80
grit, although it is possible to get bits up to 600 grit.
Thanks for this info. We will be trying the fire polish at the college here in Stroud, Glos, UK. I have some glass jewellery that I have already been using the wet fine-grit sandpaper on. Now to fire at a tack temp.
ReplyDeleteThanks for this info. I have done the extra polishing with finer wet sandpaper and now to try the low temp tack fuse.
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