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Pyros Newsletter - May 2006
Breakthrough - We Freeze and Fuse Borosilicate!
Eli Aller is going to be writing the article, but I just had to let you all know that at Hot Glass Horizons last week, he and I made a tiny bit of history by freezing and fusing borosilicate.
Borosilicate is usually worked in the torch because of the high temperatures required to bend it. But Eli is a genius, OK? He went to the Corning Museum library, looked up the viscosity curves for borosilicate, and predicted that boro would fuse at 1600 degrees or so. He brought some Northstar powder to HGH and at 2:00 in the morning, in an Evenheat Studio 8 kiln, we made it happen.
This is our shell, still piping hot and sitting on the kiln shelf. The surface finish and detail were just extraordinary (and the points glow in the dark, by the way)! This is incredibly exciting for me, because I have always wanted to be able to work boro but was afraid of damaging my kiln. 1600 degrees is a temperature I can reach any day!
Thanks to Eli for doing the research, and thanks to Gil and Carmen Reynolds and the staff at Hot Glass Horizons for giving us the chance to try this out!