I'm looking into doing lampwork; I especially want to learn to make pendants, beads, and tobacco pipesThe only thing I can't find much info on is using a kilnI've found some sites that say to put your finished work in the kiln, but I'm not sure how long to do thisIs it necessary to put a finished piece in the kiln, or at least is it necessary to put the things I want to make into a kiln? What's the point of using one in the first place? They're expensive and I don't want to buy one unless I absolutely have to.
i heard toothpaste works rather well.
Baking sodaOr toothpasteEither work equally well, but are abrasive.
If you cool hot glass down quickly there are a lot of tensions in the glassWhich means that at some random time in the future it will break pretty much spontanously (usually a slight knock/bump will set it off, but it really doesn't take much, it would happen little later spontanously) As the glass cools, the outside will always cool faster than the insideAs glass cools it contractsIf the outside of the glass cools much faster than the inside, the outside glass contracts faster than the inside glassThis variance in contraction causes stress in glassToo much stress and the glass breaksThe slower the glass is cooled, the less the amount of temperature variance throughout the glass and less the amount of stress that will developIf you cool glass down slowly you don't get those tensions, so your work will last For small items people will use ceramic blackets and I think while you are starting to practice for beads and pendants it's OK to start with a fiber blanket, but if you want to get serious about it and most definitely if you want to sell items you will have to buy a kilnOtherwise what you make can crack and you will have unhappy customersAnd maybe some with cut fingers too, for a broken bead can be sharp Generally if you want to do lampwork the best is to take a classMaybe you even can make an arragement where you can rent equipment outside class timeGenerally it's not worth investing that much money into a hobby unless you are absolutely sure you keep with itAnd you won't be absolutely sure until you've actually done it for a while.
