Equipment appreciation: Kilns
Pictured here we have as many hand blown glass plates ready to be slumped flat in our kiln
Whether you are new to the Broken Plates brand or a loyal enthusiast, you may have noticed these big ovens in some of our posts. These ovens are called kilns and we use them for a variety of reasons to create our innovative glass wearables. We are able to specifically program these kilns to heat up and cool down at certain rates, depending on what project we are working on. The type of glass we use needs to cool down and heat up very slowly in order for there to be no breakage.
When we can take our hand blown glass plates to the waterjet to be cut, we need them to sit flat on the machine. This means that we have to put them in the kiln and slowly bring them up to temperature in order to slump them flat
We also use these kilns to fire polish our glass. After the jewelry has been cut at the waterjet, we have to take it back to the studio to sand the rough edges and make them more smooth. After the edges are smoothed out, we have to fire polish them in our kilns to return the edges to their glossy shine. This is also the step of the process when we would torch the Iridescent glass to make it shiny.
Last but not least, we use kilns to anneal our glass plates after we’ve blown them in the Hot Shop. Because this glass needs to cool down slowly overnight, we have to put our finished plates into a 900 degree preheated kiln as soon as we have finished the blowing process.
Long story short, these kilns are essential to the production of Broken Plates contemporary glass wearables. Just look at what can happen as a result of this unique process!
