Glass Cabachon

In an earlier post, I shared my experience in making dichroic and glass cabachons. Up to this point the only thing I'd done with any of them was glue on a bail and hang it on a cord.

This weekend I taught a class on combining glass cabs with metal clay. So I decided it was time to try out my own homemade cabs. I didn't use a dichroic piece but a cab I'd made with transparent glass scraps. This was one time I actually drew up an idea first (but of course it changed slightly by the time it was done. It always does.) I was a little worried that maybe it wouldn't hold up, but it did and I was very happy with the way it turned out.

We did have an "Oh no" moment with one of the dichroic pieces though. It came through the firing just fine, no problems. But when it came out of the tumbler the large cab had popped out. The back layer of the cab was fused to the silver but the top two layers broke right off. This was not one of my cabs, but one of two I bought for a previous class. Funny thing is though, the other cab of these two did the exact same thing. At that time I thought it might have been a defective cab and now I'm darn sure of it. They were the exact same size and color and must have been made in the same batch. (The sunflower pendant was the bad cab from the past.)

No problem though, we just got out the E6000 glue and glued it back in. It's held my cab in for months now.

I did have a senior moment though when I went to fire the weekend's pieces. Since my glass cab was rather large, I ramped the kiln at 500 degrees per hour to 1470 and held for 45 minutes. I was thinking that the first hour would ramp at 500 degrees, then zip right up to the higher temperature. Time was of the essence and two hours would get me home early. Wrong! It took three hours to get to 1470 (3x500) and then another 45 minutes. I had to stay to open the door until the temperature dropped to 1000 degrees and then close it. Don't know what I was thinking.