Help, everything is cracking !

[Meerkat]

For the last two days now, almsot everything I have annealed in my kiln, I have woken up to find has cracked in the kiln during the final stages of annealing.

The cycle I am using, is when I am done for the day, I let everythign soak for an hour at 1050F and then take it down 100F every hour until it gets to 500F and then I turn off the kiln and let it naturally cool down.

This has beeen working fine for me, but now everything is cracking, I am guessing it has to do with the fact that it has gotten really cold now that we are in winter and the garage where my studio is at is not insulated and thus very cold, so I am *guessing* that maybe the last stage of the cycle (500F to room temp) is just too harsh ???

But what can I do, as it is, it takes 6 hours to take the kiln from 1000 to 500 meaning the latest I can work is 6 hours before I plan to go to bed so I have time to ramp the kiln down.

The only other thing I could think of is that all the pieces that are cracking are ones taht are coated on the inside with frit as that is something I just started doing and am making a bunch of prodo frit covered spoons and jars, I have never made frit covered stuff before so this is a first, I am coating the insides entirly in frit, keeping the pieces in the flame for a long time making sure all the frit is melted in before working the pieces and putting them in the kiln. So I dont really think its the frit being the problem, although I could make some non frit things to test this theory.

The only things that are not cracking is the solid pendants I am making.

[mer]

i crash my kiln in the winter without problem. my guess woud be the frit. what colors are you using? when you say it's getting all the way melted in do you mean completely smooth on the inside? when i was starting out i used to have cracking issues with frit sometimes. i learned to blow the piece out and shrink it down three or four times to be sure it was completely in (gives it a deeper look too). definantly try a piece with just fumes next time to be sure but the frit seems like the most likely culprit to me. good luck and ask again if it doesn't get better soon.

we could work on it this summer when you visit if you're still having any problems but hopefully you'll figure it out before then.

[PortlandGlassBlowers]

I had Bubblegum frit crack on me in side pipes.

[mer]

exotics are sketchy too

[vetropod]

500 to room temp DEF shouldn't be your issue. The glass is basically cold at 500...

[Meerkat]

its a combo of bubblegum frit and plum crazy frit, put in a schott tube, I melt it down so its all smooth on the inside, I have fixed everythign twice now, their just cracking like crazy all over the piece, not just in one area. I really like the effect I am getting from the frit but if it means cracked pieces and lots of money wasted on oxy from making and fixing them, plus electricity wasted in kilining them, I dunno what I am gonna do.

[mer]

try w/o the bubblegum

[Drolken]

You may also want to check your frit/powder for metal shavings, get a good magnet or 2 and drop it in your jar of frit/powder shack it up and pull out your magnets. If there is any metal in it, it will attach to your magnet. If you find any metals, clean off your magnet and do it again till all the metal is gone.

[Harry Paratesteez]

I'll say to you what my teacher once said to me.....


Don't be an idiot.

[Harry Paratesteez]

Btw...your kilns fucked up......you prolly have it programed for the wrong thermalcouple

[knaz]

Ive been making pc's with inside bubblegum frit and have had cracking problems.
If you work it really fast and don't thermal shock it less will crack.
I try to take less than 10min per pc.

[misled youth]

metal shavings are the problem, i would put money on it
also how much frit are you adding? if you apply frit to unevenly it will have issues.

[Meerkat]

Would there be metal shavings in it, if its straight out of the jar ?

[Meerkat]

Btw...your kilns fucked up......you prolly have it programed for the wrong thermalcouple

Why would you even say that ? My kiln works great and I don't have it programmed for the wrong thermocouple...

Im asking for advice here, there is no need to be pulling a shitty ass attitude on me.

[mer]

sometimes metal shaving get in at the factory. still, i think it's the bubblegum.

[Meerkat]

I just made one with only the plum krazy frit will see how it goes... so what use if the bubble gum frit if its promotes cracking or is there a special way to work the bubblegum frit ?

[The Glass Fish]

Would there be metal shavings in it, if its straight out of the jar ?

Yes, sometimes. What frit are you using? I had major cracking issues until I used magnets on my frit. I couldn't believe how much metal was in it. I must have gotten a bad batch, though, 'cause some colors had none.

[Gibsons Glassworks]

yep i had crackage issues with the bubblegum on the inside. never again will i do that

[PortlandGlassBlowers]

LIke Mermonkey was saying. Ditch the Bubblegum,.

[glasspapi]

good thing harry chimed in with his wide range of knowledge.


seriously...bubble gum is ugly anyways and it does crack. Move on from bubble gum...some colors just arent worth the hassle.

[beachglass]

you could also try a ramp down more like 60 degrees per hour to 950, then hold at 950 for about an hour...should take less time than your current ramp, and be a bit nicer on the glass..

[PyroChixRock]

i remember reading something about abe buying a bad ass magnet for NS/PC, so metal in frit is less of a problem now.

[misled youth]

yeah i read that too, said if you put one on each side of your hand it would go right through your hand.
i think alot of the frit peeps are having probs with is old. i had the same problem awhile back. i made a metal tray and stuck a bunch of magnets to it.
works great. alot of metal in every jar i had except the green/amber

[Meerkat]

Well just checked the kiln this morning and all the bubblegum/plum krazy stuff was cracked again, I have fixed it twice, I am not fixing it again. However the one piece I made that was a combo of fume and plum krazy had no problems. So I am guessing its the Bubble Gum frit, so is this stuff useless then ? What can I do with it ? Can I even put the cracked pieces into my scrap pile which I then grind up to make rainbow frit or is the bubblegum in the cracked pieces going to contaimate everything.....

[Meerkat]

seriously...bubble gum is ugly anyways .

I really liked the colour and when combined with the plum crazy frit it really looked nice, but oh well..

[Harry Paratesteez]

sorry mang ....didn't meen to offend ya, I had a prob w/ my kiln awhile back where I somehow re-configured my thermal coulple by pushing some wrong buttons.....
Ya frit has metal...I thought it was common knowledge to run a magnet through it.....rare earth....rip it out of an old pc kinda magnet.
Try no to be so emo man...I was just givin insight..right or wrong.
Like I have it in for you...I have bigger fish to fry.


Piece,
MAtt

[Meerkat]

its all good, I just am used to people ripping on me or my kiln cuz its home made.

I actually made some pendants using the bubblegum frit as an impolosion and it worked fine, no cracking... so it must be a problem with hollow stuff.

I will try running it all through a magnet though.

[meadowesky]

I had the same problem last night with bubblegum. It looked pretty cool until it started cracking while I was working on it. no problems so far with any other frit but this one. I couldnt stand to toss all that glass so I bunched it up and made the ugliest, bubbliest marble you have ever seen in your life. LOL

[Fire on the mountain]

did you break apart the cracked pieces to see if the frit was actually melted in all the way?? ive had issues with bubblegum too so im sure that was it. if you fume some gold and then pick up some bubblegum to do a frit implosion pendant it looks pretty cool. be careful to use a very oxygen rich flame it reduces to white really easily.

[mer]

i think we have reached a consensus......

bubblegum blows.

[ShttrdSpctrm]

i think we have reached a consensus......

bubblegum blows.

lmao.....word!

[Meerkat]

yeah, I checked the cracked pieces, the frit was completly melted in...

But at least it wont be a waste of frit, the bubble gum is doing great for implosions and it looks pretty.

[Meerkat]

I had the same problem last night with bubblegum. It looked pretty cool until it started cracking while I was working on it. no problems so far with any other frit but this one. I couldnt stand to toss all that glass so I bunched it up and made the ugliest, bubbliest marble you have ever seen in your life. LOL

I sorta did the same thing, I managed to get one of the spoons I made with bubblegum frit to survive after repairing all the cracks twice. However in doing so the spoong got all warped and mangled and I knew there was no point in saving it, but I had an idea, which was that I am going to make the jankiest, piece of shit spoon that I could and put it up for sale with all myother stuff and see if someone thinks its cool and wants to buy it.

"Oh man, its so wild how you got all these organic twists and turns in this pipe, man and how its all warped and weird looking, that is so fucking cool"

Should be an interesting experiment.