Never refuse to refuse?

“Never refuse to refuse” is a statement often seen on social media. 

I object.

If the saying were changed to “never refuse to re-use” maybe I would agree under certain circumstances.

Before you even begin to think about using the broken or disappointing glass, you need to determine what went wrong.  The difficulty may prevent you using it in certain ways, or even at all. 

You need to determine if the break is due to incompatibility.  If it is, you cannot refuse or reuse it in any way.  It will continue to break anything you combine it with.  It must be junked. This means you need to have a way to diagnose the cause to the stress that lead to the break.

If you are certain the break is from thermal shock or inadequate annealing, it is possible to combine the pieces with other glass.

It is essential to determine why the problem occurred to know whether you can re-fuse.  You also need to know, or discover, how to prevent the break for the future. Once the cause of the difficulty has been determined, it may be possible to fuse again, but consider what the appearance will be.  The nature of the difficulty will give you clues to re-usability.

A repaired piece most often shows it is repaired. To try to appropriate the Japanese art of repairing the revered but broken object, just does not work for a broken new piece.  It was a new piece, with no history of use or display.

The phrase “never refuse to refuse” – while catchy – is extremely misleading and can lead to a lot of difficulty. Learn the lessons and move on to make a whole new and sound piece, rather than a repaired piece.