Friday Night Fusing Clinic
November 10th, 2006 ... Frisby Float Casting, with special guest, Tyler Frisby
Frame Assembly:
Cut out 2" wide strips of ½" or 1" wide fibreboard to make a box the desired size, ie, 4 strips 9" long. Nail together with plain 2_ common finishing nails, 2 per side. Pre fire to 25 degrees higher than the hottest temperature you will reaching with this technique. This burns off the binders in the fibreboard.
Mold Prep:
Remove your kiln shelf from your kiln and place on a table, with 2 edges just off the table, to make picking it up after easier. Lay the frame on your kiln shelf, no kiln wash or shelf paper is required.
Using a fine kitchen sifter, begin evenly sifting in Pottery Powder #1.
Continue until powder has filled the fibreboard frame.
Take a long piece of glass and level off the powder. Be as gentle as possible doing this. You do not want to compress the powder.
Once the powder is level, scrap any excess off the edges of your kin shelf.
Making the Image:
Now it is time for acting school. Pretend you are a drill press with whatever shape you have on have. Make sure it has no undercuts on it. Very gently, press your object into the powder in a downward vertical motion, just like a drill press would.
Stop pressing once it has made a good impression, then even more carefully, lift the object back out. Now lift the shelf up very carefully and place back in the kiln on posts.
Preparing the Glass:
Use 2 layers of 5mm float glass. Clean both carefully with a good glass cleaner. Cut the glass to size so it will lay down at the middle of your fibreboard frame. Lay the tin side face down on the base layer. The tin will help act as a release with the powder. If you don't know which side is the tin side, we do have a tin scope here we can check your glass with, we can sell you one, (but they are really expensive), or there is a sort of effective cheap test. Hold the glass up at a 45 degree angle, and run some water down the side of one side, then the other side. The side with the tin on it, the water will run down faster.
If you want to use some float frit or other COE 82 colourant, you can put it between the glass layers or on top. This technique only works well with float glass, as it is much stiffer than COE 90 or System 96 glass. 90 or 96 will ooze into the powder, creating fissures and distort the image you created.
Firing Schedule:
6 Segments, 18 hour running time
| 350 | 300 | 700 | 9999 | 9999 | 300 |
| 1000 | 1350 | 1420 | 1100 | 950 | 130 |
| 15 | 20 | 20 | 5 | 1.30 | 1 |
Note: the 1.30 in Segment 5 is 1 hour and 30 minutes, or 90 minutes.
Clean Up:
Once fired, gently move the fibreboard walls off the edge of the kiln shelf, allowing the powder to pour into a bucket held just below the kiln shelf. You can re-use the powder over and over, once it has been used. Do not mix fresh and used powder.
Sources of materials:
- Fibreboard, Tin Scope = Stained Glass Stuff
- Pottery Powder #1 = Morin Brothers, Capital Pottery
- Float Glass = Any commercial float glass store, (European, Centennial, etc)
Catch it on Video
- 34 second video ... Float Casting (11MB MPG version)
Please note: In order to play these videos, you will need a media player that plays MPG files:
After Firing
