Fused Glass - Glass Pendants - Step Three
Preparing to Fire Your Project
Preparing your fused glass project for firing is a very important step and should not be ignored. Just like any other step involved in the project, it's a good idea to gather up everything you need before getting started.
Since we are going to be preparing our project for firing, you'll need to gather up the following items: All of the glass pieces you cut, some clean water with a bit of dish soap, or you can use plain denatured alcohol if you choose, a kiln washed kiln shelf or a kiln shelf with the appropriate sized piece of thin fire paper to cover it, and some plain white glue or better yet some fusers glue.
Cleaning and Assembling Your Project
When your dealing with fused glass it is important to remember that "clean glass is happy glass". Placing dirty glass into your kiln and firing it, will more often than not result in poor results, and poor results tend to lead to discouragement, and discouragement leads to not trying to do better, or just walking away from the hobby.
Having said that, it's time to clean your glass. Be careful when handling any cut glass, "it will have sharp edges". Using a soft cloth and some soapy water, or a soft cloth and some alcohol to thoroughly clean and dry both sides of every piece you will be using. Once you have cleaned the glass be careful to handle the glass by the edges only. You'll need to make sure you have cleaned any fingerprints or oil from the surface of your pieces.
Assembling Your Pendants
Once you have cleaned all of your glass, either use a kiln washed kiln shelf, or place a piece of thin fire shelf paper on your kiln shelf and layout your base pieces (the biggest ones) on the shelf, making sure you leave enough space in between them. If you cut the pieces to the sizes I suggested they will shrink a bit when fired, (I'll explain the shrinking a bit later when I cover the topic of volume control) but it is a good practice to leave at least 1/2 inch spacing between them to ensure the pieces don't fuse together.
After placing your base pieces down on the shelf, place a single small drop of white glue, or fusers glue right in the center of each base piece. The fusers glue is easy to work with and allows you enough time to make sure your second layer pieces are centered on the base pieces. Take your time and make sure that your pieces are fairly well centered.
Once you have placed all of the second layer pieces on the bases, repeat the same steps to add your third layer of glass.
Once you have assembled all of the pieces on your shelf, you are ready to move on to firing your fused glass pendants.
Give the glue a good chance to set and dry thoroughly. While your waiting for the glue to set and dry it's a good idea to make sure that the inside of your kiln is clean and free of dust. Just use a vacuum to clean out the inside of your glass kiln.
