Fusing Pendants

Pendant Fusing Tips

Suggestions with your Pendants

For holes to hang necklaces you can use either a mandrel with bead release or for a cleaner finish cut a strip of fibre paper. Fibre paper can be cut with a Stanley knife to desire thickness. Fibre paper makes a square hole as opposed to round, unless you roll the paper between your fingers beforehand. Its best to wear gloves when playing with fibre paper due to the fibre particles.
For pendants, I place an underlying layer of glass – black always looks good with dichroic. I then place my design on that layer with the fibre paper across the top. I may use fusing glue to hold delicate designs in place – be aware not to use too much or bubble will get trapped in your work. Then I place a slightly larger sized clear piece of glass over the top of the design
Fibre paper should be close to the top but not too close as the glass will push it out when it melts. This comes with experience as I’ve found some designs eg Triangles are more susceptible to pushing the fibre paper out between the layers than a square or rectangle.

Before you fire your items:

Always clean the pieces carefully with methylated spirits or rubbing alcohol. This removes finger prints and any unwanted substances from marking your work.
With pieces that have a point, eg a square, triangle, rectangle, always lightly grind the point so its rounded. If left as is, when fused it becomes a pretty sharp splinter.
Space out your items in the kiln so that for smaller items have a minimum of a thumb space between each item. For larger items, such a plates double the space. Otherwise they may fuse together!
Always use shelf primer as opposed to kiln wash. Kiln wash sticks to the back of the opal (non-transparent) glass. Its hard to get off and it doesn’t look very good.
If you are using ½ shelves in your kiln, don’t place your work across the join, unless you have thick fibre paper underneath. May sound obvious but its been done and the work won’t sit flat unless fused again

If something doesn’t work as expected, don’t throw it away. Glass can be refused so the item can be fixed or added to another design.

Dichroic

Dichroic can be fused more than once. After the 2^nd firing it may start to change colours to the left of the colour spectrum and potentially could start to get a crazed look about it.

April 2004