Something new to encase!!!!

[Mr. Wonka]

http://www.csonline.net/glass/metal.jpg


Hi folks.

Well, here it is: As shown in the above photo, the new material I have been experimenting is SILICON… a mineral that is completely compatible with boro and is used to make computer chips. The high grade looks like solid mercury, and the lower grade looks like some sort of alien metal (think "Roswell").

This mineral is very brittle, and the large chunks can be wrapped in a towel and smacked with a hammer to produce hundreds of smaller chunks. It works well for marbles, pendants, and whatever else you can think of.

For $25.00 you will each of the following:
-High grade chunk(s) (approx.1 ounce)
-Lower grade chunk(s) (approx.1 ounce)
-Bag of granules (approx. ½ ounce)
-Assorted sized polished pieces (for computer chips) (approx. ½ ounce)
*Free shipping (priority mail / delivery confirmation)

Some of the computer chips have green, blue, and purple colors that withstand the high temperatures of boro. I have experimented with writing on the smooth chips with a metallic pen… this will hold up to high temperatures as well (Pilot Silver Marker). You can also carve them into different shapes with a dremel tool (be sure to wear eye protection and a dust mask).

NOTE: Tube encasements don't work very well for some reason (it produces air bubbles). The best way to use it is to pick it up with a maria, and back it with another maria (clear or color).

If anyone is interested, you can send payment via PayPal- my address is glass@csonline.net. You can also call our store with your credit card information... our number is 724-791-2100. If you prefer to send a check or money order, our address is:

The Glass Blowing Center
114 Leonard Road
Hilliards, PA 16040

Well, have fun with the new material… I guarantee you’ve never seen anything like it, and I’m very proud to be the first person to introduce this to the glass world :)

Also- please post photos of your completed work- I'm looking forward to seeing what people do with it!

[LTD]

Holy crap!!!!!! my lil brother used to work for siltech america..and he had chunks of that shiz straight out of the growth chamber all over his house, I'm callin him right now.


THANK YOU!!!!!!

[Tzonis]

*yawn* been there done that... a year plus back......Nice bit of trickery, I don't see how useful it is myself if anyone can figure out how to pull it down etc I may be interested..

But alas I suck etc...

My two cents..

[Arcane Glass]

Thats funny, I have a 8in silicon wafer hanging in my cubical at work that I use as a mirror.

[LTD]

I'll send pics as soon as llil bro sends some chunks.
I should have hit him up before he threw most of it away!!

[slacker23]

mr. wonka got any pics of your experiments.

[kbinkster]

Very interesting, Tom. :)

[SHOOBS]

I have been encasing this stuff for a while now, I can't take credit for finding it, My bro bryan, that i went to salem with brings me all types of weird shit to encase. I am not sure where he got it but he brought me a whole bag of it. :D

[jusbag]

sweet tom, nice find!

[somberbear]

i got it , and they look great , i plan on working with it this week end once i got some time....

stuff looks awsome...

[smutboy420]

Tom, You can etch chunks of that stuff with a sand blaster also.


Its also pretty much what they spray on preforms for fiber optics and it can't be done in most shops even if some one wanted to do it. Tho this is the first I have seen or heard of it being used for glass blowing. COOL beans man.

So That is a cool find man.
Its awesome that you decided to let every one in on it before the cost goes up.
and now that thats going to be all the rage in glass and I soon supect lapidary and jewlery. I would not be suprized to see the price spike up real high then drop again over time.

This is going to be the new foil or dicro man. I can see ready made etched images and every thing with this stuff.

[Mr. Wonka]

Thanks everybody, I hope you enjoy it. I know several people that have encased silicon computer chips in the past, but the results weren’t much to brag about… which is probably why nobody has really heard about it. The chips themselves aren’t all that impressive, unless they have printed circuits on them (yes, the circuits will stay intact). What makes them unique is that you can write or draw on them with the metallic pen… That’s something I’ve never seen done before.

The “metal” itself is awesome. The high grade chunks look polished like a chunk of chrome. The lower grade is almost as shiny, and there are lots of “facets” that reflect the light… similar to tightly crumpled aluminum foil. They would look awesome as meteors in a space themed piece.

Try experimenting with different metallic inks to draw on the chips (I haven’t done that… I only used silver). How cool would that be for personalized pendants… perhaps someone’s name with a little sketch on it, and then encased?

That would be a nice item for children… “Draw something on this little square, and we’ll put it in a marble for you”.

Just some ideas for you… Have fun : )

P.S.- In my first post I said "I’m very proud to be the first person to introduce this to the glass world". I hope that wasn't too bold of a statement. If it was, I apologize.

[jboatman333]

so i have a ton of old pc's, is there anyway to gut them and get something useful?

[skip]

YEah I had a guy that would bring the chips into my old shop. I messed around with it a little but I was not very educated on what it was I was dealing with. Cool to see something "expand" on the concept and get down to a more raw element.

[gypsea]

i have received some of this raw silicon from wonka, and you will not believe how awesome this stuff looks when it is encased into a pendant....it looks like little pieces of mirror or ultra shiney metal. people are gonna love the look of this in jewelry for sure....my 22 yr old daughter tried to do a grab and run with the first pendant i made from this material....i had to chase her down to get it back to put it on my sales table.

i have a pic of a finished pendant that is in my new camera....as soon as i have time to get the new photo software downloaded and figure out the pic process i will post the pic. hopefully tomorrow....that will be my goal....you all will be amazed with this material....there are a million new ideas waiting to be executed with this!

[Mr. Wonka]

Here's a crappy picture of a marble I made with the lower grade stuff. All of the marbles were made with clear so I could test them under a polariscope (no problems at all).

http://www.csonline.net/glass/marb.jpg

[diglassworks]

that sounds AWESOME!

I can't wait to try some

[JDeMoss]

So when you encase this stuff, would it be considered silicon implants???

[JHog]

:D :D Jd...That pic looks Great Momka..thanks for sharing.

[Mr. Smiley]

This stuff looks awesome Tom. You rock!

[Orrza]

Hay Tom, Thanks for sharing!!
I was first introduced to this "metal" 10 years ago as a "piece of stone of UFO landing place" :LOL:
It reacts wonderfully with ice, I believe since it funcions as a super conductor (electrically) it does with heat and cold too, so it absorbs verything, heat and cold.

Thanks,
Its a nice thing I will definatly be trying!!

Orr.

[skip]

Damn Orrza where you been??? Glad you are around...

[Mr. Smiley]

Orr, did they give you your walking papers this year? Can we expect you at AGI? *crossing fingers and toes* I hope they've figured out you aren't a terrorist by now. :D

[burnoutboy]

sweet! wow.

[Nightcat]

Thats funny, I have a 8in silicon wafer hanging in my cubical at work that I use as a mirror.Me Too. I have encased some chips in marbles. Looks pretty cool when the marbles don't split. I haven't looked it up, but it "seems" to have a COE of 1 or something much less than 33 anyway. A big clear marble will hang together if I anneal it for a long time and cool it down super slow. Even the ones that haven't split I expect to split eventually.

[Nightcat]

Here is a few shots of the one chip embedded marble I have at my desk. You can see that there is an internal crack but the marble so far has stayed together. I think part of the problem is that the die surface is very flat and the die corners are square and that acts as a ready made shear planes. I bet you woulod have less problem with a "chunk". Anyway... pardon my crappy photography... here they are -> :o:

[Mr. Wonka]

You hit the nail on the head Nightcat- When you encase computer chips (or chunks with square edges) you have to paddle in the edges to work out the air bubbles. Since the silicon won't melt with the surrounding glass you have to take some precautions.

Here is a photo of an unannealed piece with a computer chip in it. I'm just speculating that this is a good thing, but it looks like the chip distributed the stress so evenly, that it formed a perfect "+" pattern in the glass.

http://www.csonline.net/glass/chip.jpg



BTW- for those of you that ordered, your packages went out today. I also gave you more material than was advertised. I hope you have fun with it, and please post some photos of your work!

[gypsea]

here is a pic of a pendant made from the raw form.....

[Mr. Wonka]

Has anybody else played with this stuff yet? Do you have any questions... comments... photos?

[Udai Hussien]

I'm curious tom, can you fume with it? if so, any cool effects?

[JDeMoss]

I just got mine in the mail. thanks

I'll post some picks once I get some stuff done with it. This is enough to last a very long time. Thanks for the extra.

[jusbag]

Yeah got mine yesterday... Probably get to mess around with it this weekend... Looks cool :)

[Firekist]

so tom, was that an unannealed piece? i wasn't expecting to see stress patterns like that in a finished piece, that's all.

i should have ordered already.. dunno why i haven't..

z--seth

[Mr. Wonka]

No, that piece was never annealed. I have a bunch of things I made as experiments to see how it holds up with and without annealing. I was very surprised with that pattern... it definitely shows stress, but it's so evely distributed; I don't know if that's good or bad (any input?).

Dwaine- you can't fume with it. The melting point is somewhere arond 3600 degrees.

[Primathon]

I stuck an Athlon chip in a blob of clear last week. It turned out OK, but the backside is rather ugly - I need to find a good method of separating the processor die from the chip itself other than melting it. The chip is <1mm thick, so it's incredibly fragile as well - evidenced by me snapping the damn thing in half. I got it together, though, and it's not too noticable. I'll post pics when I find a decent camera.

[Brian Newman]

Is there the same stress if it is annealed? If not, the pattern is from the sillicon conducting heat so well.

[petto]

very nice, cool concept

[Orrza]

Oh, Thanks guys...
Ehat do you meen "Where have I been"???
I was at the mensroom... :)

Just kidding :-)
I was around and I may be attending AGI this year, The papers are O.K. (not the mensroom papers) LOL...
:)

Peace,
Orr.

[Mr. Wonka]

Hi folks.

A lot of people have sent me e-mails asking if the silicon is still available. I have a good supply of it here, and access to a lot more of it if need be.

Let me know if you need some (or some more) and I can hook you up.

For those of you who want to order it, the cost is:

$25.00 for a sample pack:
-High grade chunk(s) (approx. 1 ounce)
-Lower grade chunk(s) (approx. 1 ounce)
-Bag of granules (approx. ½ ounce)
-Assorted sized polished pieces (computer chips...approx. ½ ounce)
*Free shipping (priority mail / delivery confirmation)

-OR-

$5.00 per ounce for the lower gade

$9.00 per ounce for high grade & granules

$9.00 per ounce for polished computer chips (while supplies last)

+ $4.00 shipping (priority mail / delivery confirmation)

*Note: I have been weighing the packages out very heavy... instead of 1 ounce, it usually weighs 1.5 to 2 ounces, and I'll continue to do that as long as I can.


Does anyone have any feedback or questions? Feel free to ask if you do.
e-mail: info@glass123.com
phone: (724) 791-2100

NOTE- Be sure to trap the silicon between 2 marias.... tube encasements will create lots of small air bubbles.


Please post some photos of your completed work, or tips and tricks on how to work with it :)

[somberbear]

i did my first maria encasement... got some ideas on how to improve but total i like what i see. it didnt crack and i also made the largist marble i have made to date... nothing special though...

but this stuff has alot of potentical... the chips are sow awsome.


peace
rob

[karlt13]

Iv found something that you can encase that you can grow yourself, Scabs from healing cuts. I dont want to sound disgusting, but honestly iv done this and it looks like a cool peice of metal. I have no idea how the thought came to try it, but i think it was because of the pipe a while ago with the moldy cheese and urine encasement someone did. So if youv been unfortunate enough to fall off your skateboard, give it a try. O it dose smell bad though, and it will cover the inside of the tube you used with a really gross brown fume look.
have fun with the concept

[JDeMoss]

Here are some space pendants I made. The pics aren't the best, but the silicone looks awesome as floating asteroids and other space rock. The last two pics are really hard to see the silicone. In real life, these are very 3d. The pics don't do it justice.

Jesse

[somberbear]

a couple of the waffers cut up right with little round chuck of opal would look like a dope satalite

[Julian]

Nice pendants.
Still, I thought i might point out:
Silicone = gooey gel used in breast implants and as a lubricant
Silicon = gray/silver colored metal used in electronics and glassworking

[JDeMoss]

Oh, I used silicone I found in a breast implant. It kind of looks like silicon though.

[Keltik]

http://www.thegldg.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=1790

This was done with silver and gold fume with silicon from Tom

[yinzer]

keltik...it says invalid link

[somberbear]

http://www.glassartists.org/Gal15101_Marbles.asp

bottom of this link for keltik's marble

[Keltik]

http://www.glassartists.org/Images/FullSize/000087000/Img87592_031906-5.jpg

I seem to be real bad at getting images to load hear, I guess I will have to take the time to really read the how too's

[Firekist]

if you put the smaller pieces in a sieve, and rinse them, then save the rinse water and evaporate it, you get powder.. the powder sure seems like what disco sparkle has in it =) seems a good way for sparkle color making anyhow..

silicon's weird.. if you melt it, then watch it.. it will cool and then little parts of silicon will actually shoot out of itself.. (prolly the exterior cooling, the center being molten, then coolling and pushing out of the shell.. or some such..)

smashing and sifting through screens gets you the different sizes.. which i think is really nice.

the less heat, the less of those bubbles you'll get around the silicon keltik.

fun stuff.. sooooooo worth the price! i've got years worth for 60 bucks.. (unless i go and start encasing 1inch square pieces.. heh)

z---seth

[Julian]

I agree, the color of this stuff looks an awful lot like disco sparkle.
I haven't tried my bag yet.

[Mr. Wonka]

We've sent out a bunch of silicon, and I was curious as to how its working out. Any comments, questions, or photos?

BTW- I don't have any more computer chips left, but there's plenty of raw material (both grades) available if anybody needs it :)

[shelton13]

I didn't much like mine.
I haven't taken any pics because nothing was worth photographing.
I preheated in the kiln then dropped into a piece of 12 mil to encase.
The result was what appeared to be a bubble-coated piece of crumpled foil.
Not Very Impressive.
I will try other applications in the future.
**james**

[Mr. Wonka]

James- it doesn't work well (if at all) when you tube encase it. If you pick it up on a maria and back it with another maria, you won't get any bubbles at all :)

[jusbag]

^^^ if you keep it cool enough while your working it. ;)

I had a couple get tons of little bubbles backing it with a maria, but from seth's post "the less heat, the less of those bubbles you'll get around the silicon keltik." I can see that my problem was too much heat.

It confused me though because it worked great one time using a maria to back it then the next couple got all bubbly. Figured it had something to with working too hot, but haven't had time to play with it more.

[$$$$$$$]

i haven't had much time to mess with mine but nicky had good results with the maria tech. this is how he did it

take 2 rods of 12-19mm
heat the both at the same time and make a little gather on each end
smash on into a maria, just as if you were making a flower marble.
heat it back in the flame for a min
squash the maria onto the silicon (sitting on your graphite)
instantly take the other gather and squash it right into the maria

finish it off.

he usually gets no bubbles at all. seems to work pretty good that way

[gypsea]

hey, i need to make some more of these, i just sold the first pendant i made with the encased silicon last week (made it into a necklace), sold it off my neck for $150., made another nice one up into a totally different style necklace....i'm sure it will sell fast too....i'm gonna make a whole line of these...these look really cool....but right now i need to sleep, we just got back from the wannee fest, man what fun, i am running on the fumes of exhaustion......! anyway, if you have not yet played with this stuff, get some...it is really cool, and very saleable!

[somberbear]

yea i am going to toy with this stuff some more before i go into any product lines , i might just save it for a rainy day in the future when im bored. dont know yet but it sure is fun.

[Firekist]

heating a gather, picking up the silicone off a graphite pad, then poking the silicon farther into the gather with a reamer/tungsten/brass followed by a small 3-6mm hot tipped rod works well to get the Si farther into the glass without a huge gather.

also, try getting a really thin layer of striking yellow OVER the silicon before picking up.. the silicon will look totally golden yellow, and still shiney.

z---seth

[Phatty]

I just got a block of this stuff, it's great!
Everyone should try this out, if you're in Canada we got it but if you're in the states Tom's price is a good one.
This was a big chunk but it only makes me want to try one way bigger.

http://www.glassartists.org/Gal17973_Experiments_with_Si_1.asp

I love it, it's been awhile since something new didn't let me down when I got my hopes up.

peace phatty

[chayes]

I got some yesterday the stuff is pretty cool. i had no problem encasing small - med size chunks between two 10mm rods. Definatley gonna be getting more.

[UmaJulz]

bumping this up since Tom was so generous to have given each of us a tidy sample of silicon at AGI this year.

Has anyone tried this on/in soft glass? If it fails, can I salvage the pieces to use in boro pendants?

[themoch]

i don't see why it wouldn't work in soft glass, i've saved CZs that didn't work in Boro, and put them into soft glass

[UmaJulz]

Some beadmakers put CZs in their beads with no problem, but I don't think they completely encase them, just seat them well in the glass. I want to use the silicon somewhat on the surface, looking like rocks or asteroids. I'll try the CZ method.

Thanks for mentioning that Bandrew, :D

[Kalera]

You can successfully fully encase CZs in soft glass.

[jusbag]

Here is a paperweight I made with some silicon. I just made a big maria (about 3 inches) and squished it over a chunk of silicon. Backed it with some clear to cover it up. Worked great, no air bubbles really.

http://www.glassartists.org/Gal28954_Some_recent_paperweights.asp

[DanBrooks]

hey this stuff is cool you guys's peices look really good i especially like the paper weights . did you know you can also put hematite in boro. i had this hematite fritt stuff that i encased in some tubes a while back. i dont know if i have any pics though, ill look. the only thing with hematite is you cant put it in the flame.

[Spider]

Nice color & texture on those weights Justin