[Johanna]

Hello all, I was looking around on the net , to see if there are other glass workers/carvers and found this site, so decided to join.
I am an artist who has drawn since I can remember when and have now decided to take this ability one step further and do glass carving. I had a lot of the tools here, as I sometimes carve ostrich eggs and also emu eggs.
At the moment I dont have anything to show you all, but am working on carving a rose from 6mil glass and am quite pleased with what is happening with it.
I have cut the back from a mirror before , carved a dragon into it, then painted the dragon. This came up quite well, but am now working at a deeper carving technique, and as there is no-one else around here that does this, I have to work out things on my own, so there are some strange things going on in my place..............

[lauri]

Johanna, on Jul 2 2010, 05:48 AM, said:

Hello all, I was looking around on the net , to see if there are other glass workers/carvers and found this site, so decided to join.
I am an artist who has drawn since I can remember when and have now decided to take this ability one step further and do glass carving. I had a lot of the tools here, as I sometimes carve ostrich eggs and also emu eggs.
At the moment I dont have anything to show you all, but am working on carving a rose from 6mil glass and am quite pleased with what is happening with it.
I have cut the back from a mirror before , carved a dragon into it, then painted the dragon. This came up quite well, but am now working at a deeper carving technique, and as there is no-one else around here that does this, I have to work out things on my own, so there are some strange things going on in my place..............

Hei Johanna, nice to have you here! I have carved some glass but mostly I'm carving stone. There is a book about glass carving, written by Barbara Norman, Engraving and decorating glass. ISBN o-486-25304-X . I'm not for sure that you will find it very helpful, but it gives ideas about the tools and different methods to use. Would be nice to see some of your strange things! Lauri.

[Johanna]

Hello lauri,
I do have quite a bit of information on the light glass carving, and have been engraving for a long time, but have taken it forward to actually cutting a design from the glass and working it in , in deep cuts.
I managed to get a set of 10 different sized diamond coated glass saws, that fit my Dremel, and find the very good. I learned a hard lesson this morning, and cracked one of the petals off the rose that I have been playing with. I kept a grinding stone in one place too long and the heat did the rest.
I have thought of getting some granite and also mother of pearl to work on as well at a later date, however, one thing at a time....................

[lauri]

Johanna, on Jul 3 2010, 05:56 AM, said:

Hello lauri,
I do have quite a bit of information on the light glass carving, and have been engraving for a long time, but have taken it forward to actually cutting a design from the glass and working it in , in deep cuts.
I managed to get a set of 10 different sized diamond coated glass saws, that fit my Dremel, and find the very good. I learned a hard lesson this morning, and cracked one of the petals off the rose that I have been playing with. I kept a grinding stone in one place too long and the heat did the rest.
I have thought of getting some granite and also mother of pearl to work on as well at a later date, however, one thing at a time....................

It's the same with quartz, a little bit of heat and the item you are working with cracks and you have to start again from zero. That's why cooling the stone
with water is so important. Granite is a nice stone to work with and it comes in so many colors. My favorite is although simple grey with as small color dots as possibly. That way the grain is very small and the stone is very smooth, perfect to make a small mouse. Or something..... Lauri.

[Don Barnhill]

Hello and welcome to TCP. We look forward to seeing some of your work. I carve antler, wood and some metal as in handguards for the knives I make. Never tried glass of stone. I use a dremel to rough out the antler, then proceed with hand tools, mostly scrapers I made for that purpose.
I gather from reading the preceding posts that you use diamond burrs to engrave,carve glass and stone. Is this correct?

[Johanna]

That is right Don.
Glass is so hard that nearly anything else will only scratch it, and I dont know very much about stone, as I have not tried it yet.
Out here in the South West of New South Wales, I am the only one for miles around that even attempts to work in glass, let alone deep carve it. I am having a ball doing what I am and learning as I go, that is if you don't take any notice of the cut fingers..................
One thing that you cant do in engraving, is make a mistake, as it is there for keeps. It is amazing how often another leaf or flower can appear on something.

[lauri]

You must once try to make a flower out of stone, there are no ways to correct what happened a second earlier when you were not focused and did not concentrate on your work. I know that it is familiar for you with glass, but with stone the lost time in most cases is longer because you can't hurry with hard stones like quartz. Also as with glass also quartz has sometimes inner tension, item you are working with just cracks without a good reason to do so. I think that it would be nice to try glass again, do you have good ideas what to do? Lauri.

[Johanna]

Lauri, I am looking at making jewellry and jewellry boxes,and clocks, trays and table tops, with one of my sons making the legs etc.
I have found with the glass, that if you are not careful and as you say, lose concentration and leave a grinder of saw on the one spot too long, heat will build up very quickly and the whole thing will crack, especially if you are working in cold weather.
I am not too keen on using the water techinique with the electric tool, even though I do have the flexible arm on them.
A compound called "Cut Lube" helps to stop this and also helps to lengthen the life of the blade that you are using.
For joins, I am either going to join them like you would wood, which I am working on now, or fuse them in the kiln. However, due to the price of electricity now, I am going to try to use another method. I did think about using a torch.
As I say, it is a lot of trial and error at the moment.
Attached is a mirror that I carved into the back and painted. It is a very old one, in which the glass is a pink tone.

[Don Barnhill]

Very nice. Thanks for sharing the photo. Another thing you may think about is to do the carving on a display case ( the glass in the lid) for knives, guns, etc. I saw some on a website and the costs start at $400.00 for a small case.