knockoff bucket to furnace cullet

[Scott Novota]

So I had a little project to do for a bunch of light fixtures. Small little deals but it created about 40 pounds of copper blue scrap cullet in my knockoff bucket. IE> about 1/2 clear and about 1/2 copper blue f1 on clear.

I realized that it was about the exact size of a single charge in my furnace and I was going to mess with making color in the near future......so I was wondering what would happen if I chunked that blue knockoff scrap in the pot and remelted it. Would it loose the blue? Would it be a light blue? Would it be extra cordy?

Should I just try it and see?

Scott.
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[Brian Graham]

The blue would probably stay unless you reduced the heck out of it. The color would probably be a little dilluted though depending on the ammount of clear.

On the other hand, copper oxide is cheap......

[Pete VanderLaan]

I am not clear on the sources of the clear and the blue. Are they both cullets? Were they made by the same manufacturer? If so, and the base formulas are principally the same, it will just be a lighter blue. If the manufacturers are different, it will probably be pretty cordy. I don't know what " about half copper blue F1 on clear" means

I don't think of copper oxide as being cheap especially when I remember it at about 15 cents a pound.

[Brian Graham]

$6.75 a pound vs .15 cents a pound.... ouch.
Was that in the Bronze Age?

[Pete VanderLaan]

It was the copper age.

[Scott Novota]

Gaffer Blue and Spectrum nuggets. I was making about 100 ornaments and have a bunch of knockoff that is mostly clear with some copper blue frit size1 on the outside of it. Looking at the bucket it looks like a pool of blue ice.

I was just wondering what would happen if I chunked this in the pot right before I switched my pots out to a larger one. If nothing else it would be fun to let my buddies at the glass shop come over and have a free go at it.


Scott.
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[Scott Dunahee]

I think it would work out fine. If you want streaky, don't stir it. If you want a pot of tinted colored glass that's pretty uniform, stir it with a potato a time or two once it's all hot and molten. It may not work well at all, but it will certainly be glass.

Don't do this until you don't want clear glass from the pot again. You can clean it out, but it'll take a LOOOONG time to get it clear again.

BSD