This is speaking of hot working. I've used silver leaf and silver foil, picked up on a bubble. Some extremely cool effects can occur. I picked up some copper leaf at the same time. What the heck--it was cheap. However, I've become convinced that it isn't really intended for hot working, since it oxidizes entirely, even if it's encased. In that case, it adds an interesting green tint to the glass.
Perhaps I was misled by the fact that it was carried at Olympic Color Rods into assuming it was for hot work. Is it just intended for warm and cold applications?
Also, thanks for the suggestions in re. silver foil sources. It seemed that there were a lot more sources of strips than of sheets, which was what I wanted.
Okay. I didn't check with Olympic, but I did check with someone that knows roughly everything about glass. He said that you can't use copper foil/leaf hot, though you can use it warm. He did some fusing with it about thirty years ago. At that time, the only kind available to him was adhesive-backed (probably used for stained glass just like today). At fusing temperatures, the goo on the back would burn, releasing gas and tarnishing some of the foil, so there would be shiny and corroded patches. He didn't care for the effect, though he said some people liked it. He had enough other ideas that he never bothered getting any non-adhesive copper to try.
I think he was amused at the idea that anyone would try to work with it hot . . . he said that only works with silver and gold. As a side note, I see that you can also get palladium foil, which can be worked hot. It is very expensive but is supposed to have a wide range of colors. When I can bring myself to spring $65 for
25 small sheets, I might try some, but my at my skill level it wouldn't really make sense. He said that he sometimes used a palladium solution on fused glass, but didn't know how it would work to drip some onto a bubble and heat in the furnace. It needs to go to 1200 degrees to become metallic, which of course is no problem in the furnace. Unknown how hot it can get, though. If the range is small, it might be possible but hard to achieve. If it lasts up to a high heat (or better yet, if it passes through a range of colors) it might be pretty cool. A small bottle is around fifty bucks. I guess I could try it and then pass it along to a fuser if it was a disaster. I'm thinking I might be able to dissolve it in a larger amount of water and dunk a piece in it. That might give a combined crackle effect with palladium on the surface. Or the steam might prevent it from ever reaching the surface.
It might be possible to make a solid form of some kind analogous to silver bromide/chloride/iodide. That would probably be a lot easier to get onto a hot piece. I see that it does form these compounds, but their melting points are on the order of 250 degrees C vs.
450-550 degrees for the silver ones. Maybe that wouldn't be the best way to use it, either. Not to mention I'd have to find a source or make them myself....
In the event I try it, I will report on the result.
Before this gets too confused, Brian knows what copper foil tape is colleen, he was saying the stuff with adhesive is his middle name. Copper foil without adhesive backing, .003" thick, is available from K&S Engineering which sells the flat brass and telescoping tubing in hardware and hobby stores. They sell it as an embossing product and for cutting out flower petals, etc. Not all stores carrying the tubing will have the foil. Ironically, in the middle of this discussion, I got a review copy of a very good looking new book Warm Glass from Lark Press which has a platter project calling for both aluminum and copper foil but both are trapped between two layers of glass and never exposed to open heat. Both the copper and aluminum show random color changes.
"Mike Firth" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@corp.supernews.com:
Foils in various thicknesses are available from engineering or automotive supplies as 'shim' used for making machine parts fit. Comes in brass, copper, steel, aluminium etc, and thickness varying by thousandths of a inch. Phil
Mike, I believe that one can purchase palladium sheets via Arrow Springs....and while it's still expensive, the last I purchased was $50 for 25 sheets...the same price as gold. Still a lot money, though....
Copper foil and leaf does oxidize and that's why I love using it in hot glass. You can get great effects layering it with silver foil or both of those with enamels. If you have any white enamel melt that onto your work, then layer silver and then copper. You want the turquoise affect to happen. It's pretty cool and no one will know you used either copper or silver.
Interesting oddity about palladium foil/sheet: Back when the company I work for had big lasers, palladium was sometimes used as a target material. I have a piece with a half-inch hole burned through the middle from a laser test and it produced a nice series of concentric colored rings, from local heating effects, sort of like titanium or case-hardened steel.
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