Getting up to speed

I'm planning to use this blog as a place to keep notes while I learn more about working with glass. I've learned a lot about making stained glass pieces over the last year and just bought my first kiln.

So far, I've only done 2 fires. Here's what I've figured out so far. Fire #1
I VERY quickly cut 90coe glass into a 4x4in clear glass for the top and 4 1x1 in colored squares of glass for the bottom.

	Just before fusing. Next time I should make sure everything is lined up more exactly.
	Just after fusing.

Then I did another fire with two new coasters using a modified design and refiring one of the coasters from the previous fire with a few pieces of glass on top.

Just before fusing.	Just after fusing. placing the glass on top led to less exact, fluid lines
Just after fusing. Part of the yellow was two pieces that still shows a line. The guy at the glass shop said this would go away with a longer soak at 1480. But, the kiln tripped the circuit breaker at some point so I'm not actually sure how long of a soak this had.	Just after fusing. Having an extra slice of clear led to a line. As with the other one, apparently a longer soak is the way to solve this but, since the circuit breaker was tripped, there's no way to know how long of a soak it had.

Starting Temp	Ending Temp	Rate Per Hour	Minutes to Hold
Room temp	1100	300	0
1100	1240	150	30
1240	1480	max	10
1480	900	150	45

Lessons to remember for future fires:

• cut and line up glass very carefully
• a single piece of glass laid on top of a layer will, when it becomes liquid, ooze outwards a bit. Use only when you're ok with having that effect.
• I need an isolated circuit for my kiln