Making frit balls out of translucent & dichroic glass

[amycsalo]

Hello everyone! I am fairly new to fusing and I have been making a bunch of frit balls out of opal coarse frit and they have been turning out fantastic. I tried the same firing schedule with some transparent coarse frit and it did little to nothing to make the frit "ball" up. It just looks like slightly less sharp frit with some sparse balls here and there. I have a 22" square Jen Ken Kiln and I have tried firing at AFAP to1500 with a 10 minute hold then off, AFAP to 1525 with a 15 minute hold then off and AFAP to 1525 with a 30 minute hold then off, all with no luck. I am using thin fire shelf paper to fire them on. The colors vary but the result is the same with all of my attempts. Any thoughts on what I should try next?

I have also had trouble with making dichroic "dots" out of 6 mm wide sizzle stix that I nipped into little squares with my nippers. Either they don't ball up, or they ball up but the dichroic coating cracks on the top. The glass is fine it is just the coating that gets a tiger stripped or zebra appearance. I am using the same schedules as listed above with no success. This is an expensive experiment

Any suggestions would be GREATLY appreciated. Thank you SOOO much!!

Amy

[marykaynitchie]

Hi Amy,

Use shelf primer instead of Thinfire to make frit balls. That might be the cause of the trouble with the transparent ones.

Re your dichro, if you are trying to make cabachons, you can place a piece of clear sheet over the dichro to help manage the diameter and the coating. I made some cabachons a couple of years ago for my sister, and it took some experimentation to make sure the top layer of clear covered the dichro without being so large that the straight edge of dichro coating could be seen underneath. Photos:

27941984542_1c6d788cd6_m.jpg (16.89 KiB) Viewed 25942 times

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(Each of these photos is 240 pixels wide.)

Other frit ball resources:
http://www.bullseyeglass.com/methods-id ... balls.html
viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4031&start=20

Video lesson for subscribers
https://videos.bullseyeglass.com/videos ... rit-balls/

I hope this helps!

Mary Kay

[amycsalo]

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!! That is all awesome information!!! I will try all of that for sure. I have been pulling my hair out trying to figure out what is going on. I will remove the shelf paper and fire them agina tonight and hopefully I will have better results. I have some clear extra large frit so that should be easy to nip and try to put on the top of the little dichroic pieces. Thank you again, what a great community

Amy

[amycsalo]

I fired the kiln last night and popped open the lid this morning. The dichroic idea was great and those turned out perfect. It will take some practice but that really seemed to help! However the other translucent glass frit was just as it was on the thinfire. I just put it on the primed shelf and I used the schedule from the article. Not sure why this would still be happening...do I need a longer hold time? Any further suggestions would be much appreciated. I have a large project I need a bunch of dots for and I am chomping at the bit to get it done. Hopefully I can figure this out soon. Thank you for all of your help!!

Amy

[marykaynitchie]

For the transparent frit balls, what style and brand of glass are you using? And are you firing to 1525°F or some other process temperature?

[amycsalo]

It is all Bullseye Frit that I am using. I have tried 1500 & 1525 both with a 30 minute hold. Is that still too low of a temp?

Amy

[marykaynitchie]

Hi Amy,

What specific styles of Bullseye Glass are you using? For instance, if you are using yellow transparent glass, the style would be 001120-0003 (or sometimes it is shown as 1120-03).

You should be able to get frit to ball up at a 10 minute hold, so you may need to increase temperature, but it would help to know what style you having trouble with, in case the viscosity is different from a typical transparent style.

Thanks,

Mary Kay

[amycsalo]

Looks like the style is 0003 for all of the colors that I have except that the transparent is 0005. Would I need to go higher than 1525? Thank you so much!

Amy

[marykaynitchie]

Hi Amy,

The numbers -0003 and -0005 are suffixes that indicate the mesh size of the frit. -0003 is Coarse, and -0005 is Extra Coarse. What numbers appear before those suffixes?

Mary Kay

[amycsalo]

Oh, sorry. The red is 001122 and the orange is 001125. Oddly enough I refired last night and I added some new colors. The ones listed above still did not work but 001116 and 001120 both made perfect frit balls. I ran them at 1550 with a 20 minute hold and that still did not help with the red translucent or the orange translucent. Any thoughts?

Amy