Arc + Flame Center

So, I “won” a gift certificate at a recent charity silent auction… for a glass fusing class at the Arc + Flame Center. I had a nice chat with Matt, the manager, when I booked my class, and learned that in the past six years, they’ve had over 1000 people per year take classes (working with metal as well as glass). Most of their resources are devoted to vocational welder training with MCC, and they graduate up to 64 students annually, with an 85% placement rate.

Phil and Lisa

There were two other students in my Fusing Sampler class, taught by Phil and Lisa Rogerson, who were both very friendly and helpful, in addition to being extremely knowledgeable. The organization is expanding – adding not just 6000 addition square feet, but also glass blowing. Phil and Lisa were actually packing up their materials as the class progressed, to protect them from the impending construction and their move to different quarters.

demonstration projects - I wanted to make a sail-
boat. That apparently will take much more practice...

Before we got to touch any of the tools, we got an overview of different types of glass used for fusing (which can’t be used together or they’ll explode in the kiln!), and the different temperatures required for different textures: 1475 degrees gives a full fuse (like the sailboat pictured left), 1300 gives full texture, and 1375, the temperature they’d use for our class, would produce a contour fuse – there’d still be texture, but the glass would be rounded. The fusing of the glass itself takes only 10-25 minutes at the operating temperature, but the heating up and cooling down takes over 24 hours. Slumping (shaping into a mold) then takes another 20-28 hours in the kiln. This type of project is not for those requiring immediate gratification!

Our beginner project was to be a stacked mosaic. They showed us how to score the glass, and we all practiced on a small sample. We were also cautioned that, when it came to gluing our bits down, “a dot is a lot,” and too much more might cause the glass to slide off in transit to the kiln. And we were advised to clean our glass with alcohol before gluing, or dirt and dust on it would crystalize. An even more dire warning was not to get blood on the glass, since the iron in blood turns the glass brown!

my stacked mosaic, "before"...

After the great introduction to the process and the tools we would use, we got to work. It was very satisfying sorting through the bins of broken glass, which were arranged by color (of course, we all had gloves to protect us from getting cut). I decided that these shards were sufficient for my first stab at this – my own inept cutting wouldn’t result in anything more interesting that what was available…). 

...and "after"

I completed my project in about an hour, and was exhausted from standing for so long (the other couple sat to glue theirs, but for some reason, I needed to stand to get just the right placement angle…). Because of all of the construction, our pieces wouldn’t be ready for 2+ weeks. As it turned out, the construction disruption was actually over a month, so when I finally picked up my piece, Arc + Flame gave me a voucher for 50% off another class! This could become an expensive hobby…