progress and process

there are many steps involved in the process of making a mulit-tiled glass wall piece. i documented the work as i went.

 i decided to cut the outside edge of this piece into a circle shape. i did this with a flat glass cutter. the circle is 900mm in diameter.

 

this left me a raw rough edge that i had to cold work on the lathe.

the cloud image i selected to use was printed in reverse to scale. i cut the image up to match each tile.

 

i used the paper layouts to guide me in hand marking out the areas to be sandblasted in black texter, and cross-hatched the areas to stay blue.

 

this is the piece ready to be sandblasted, the black areas are going to end up being white.

 

these are the first three bottom tiles sandblasted. the black areas are sandblasted through the blue to reveal the white, then the whole surface of the tile is lightly sandblasted.

 

the progress was slow but satisfying.

while sandblasting i had the paper template next to the machine so i could keep referring to it. unlike using a photographic stencil this process was really free hand and i made aesthetic decision as i went along sandblasting.

 

 this is the sandblasting complete. i was happy with the soft finish but i had also done an earlier test where i put the sandblasted glass back into the kiln and heated it up to fire polish it. i like the effect of this so i decided to do that for this piece. 

i ended up putting the tiles into a larger kiln, and i adjusted the kiln program slightly. this resulted in a different finish then i was expecting. 

 

when i opened the kiln the glass tiles were much more glassy and glossy than i had expected. 

but in the end i think that this high gloss finish works well for this piece. the sandblasted areas don't look sandblasted, in fact it almost looks like glazed ceramic tiles. 

after all these processes the major work for this piece is complete. i have just had some professional images taken and will post these soon. i still need to resolve how to hang the tiles on the wall as well, and install the piece to really finish it, but it is easier to get the photography done before this, so the tiles will sit flat on the floor during photography. 

the hardest part is still to be done - select a title. any suggestions?