I’m a glass artist, specifically a glass fuser. My goals for my GF are to make hanging and display systems for my artwork and to incorporate etching into my work. In the past, I have mostly used Armour Etch (an acid) to etch the surface of the glass before fusing and sometimes I used a sandblaster. I made a couple of attempts to etch glass last week when I received my GF and was unsuccessful, until I did some searches and found the right power (all the power), speed (400), and LPI (225). Many thanks for that info, because this is what happened!
The glass is black iridized fusible glass. I etched a stylized “om mani padme hum” image into the iridized glass leaving only a black pattern. Then I slumped it into my Buddha mold with a dichroic glass bindi dot. So pleased!
Here’s what om mani padme hum means: “Thus the six syllables, om mani padme hum, mean that in dependence on the practice of a path which is an indivisible union of method and wisdom, you can transform your impure body, speech, and mind into the pure exalted body, speech, and mind of a Buddha[…]”
Sorry! Glass fusers use ceramic molds in kilns. I took the lasered glass, placed it onto the ceramic mold in my kiln, then heated it up to 1280 degrees fahrenheit. At that temperature, glass softens and gently slumps into whatever ceramic or steel mold is below it.
I to look to the GF for help with glass fusing projects. Cold work etching was one. But I also used it to cut thick fiber paper for base relief and I am working on it in the negative for ‘mold’ forms for small projects. It is great for making sandblasting stencils. I can put the masking media over the glass and into the GF and just weed out the pieces without having to transfer the masking to the glass. Still learning, but having a wonderful time of it.
