Have a look, I’m in the Bella Luce Art Cafe section.

Fun Finds

If you’re interested in the set, get in touch with Cristi at Bella Luce Art Cafe, and tell her I sent you!

So how did I pack these up?  Given this is the second time I had to make these, I want to be extra sure there’s no problems.  If you’ve read the other 3 installments, you know there’s a lot of work that go into these, and this set didn’t even include having to make a case (the first version came with one, so I didn’t have to remake one).

Well, I didn’t take a lot of pictures on the packing because..it’s boring.   But quickly, I bought a Sterlite plastic shoe box and some quilting batting.

The batting got cut up into strips and each piece was individually rolled into a strip.  Inside the box there was a layer of batting at the bottom, then the pieces all snug in the box, and more batting on top and tucked around the sides.   The box then went into a USPS Priority Mail shoe box sized box, and that, my friends, is what’s going out.

Packed to go

If they break on this journey, it certainly won’t be from a lack of effort on my part.    I’ve also insured this shipment.

For those of you thinking I’m quite mad, perhaps you’re right.  I’ve effectively meted out $200.00 worth of customer service for a customer that purchased an item for less than $50.00.   In this economic climate, the only things that sets apart a dedicated artisan from the mass produced junk you can buy at the gas station is the quality of the work and the level of customer service.    In this case, for whatever reason the quality level fell and the pieces broke in transit, so I’ve gone above and beyond to make that right.

It’s how I’d hope another artisan would treat me if the situation were reversed, and that’s how I treat my customers.

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Had your fill of stores?  Done with generic, soulless goods that have no character?  Consider shopping for handmade pieces this season from the AGLF Etsy shop.   Proceeds go directly to the AGLF and benefit a group of artists embroiled in a law suit this season rather than focusing on their craft.

If you’ll recall, we made the 32 posts that the beads will rest on and put them in for an annealing cycle.

Posts ready to go

For those of you keeping score, now we have about 40 posts (extras “just in case”) and around 80 beads comprising the two sides of the chess set.   Now we just need to put them together.

Posts and beads

As a reminder, these pieces are made so that the number of beads denotes the piece.  Pawns have 1 bead, rooks 2, etc., all the way up to 6 beads on the king.   Further, the beads remain free to move on the posts themselves.   This gives a nice tactile experience to the pieces, and I thought it was kind of cool to boot.   You need to have fun in what you make, right?

To achieve this, the parts need to be made in steps and prepped as you go along.   Here is the first side prepped before going back into the flame.

Prepped posts - white side

I was a bit busy with the glass, and the flame, and the hey and the ho and the burRRRNNing so I didn’t take pictures of the next steps, but here’s what happened.  If you’re not a glass worker, consider leaving this glossary page open as you read along.

For each of the pieces, I cold sealed a punty (rod of glass for the non-glass folk) to the little bulb at the end of that post, trying to hit the center best I can.    Have I mentioned I’m center challenged?

Next, angling the post so the beads don’t slip off, I flame cut the open end of the post off, then carefully ball up the end to make a barbell shape which traps the beads onto the glass.  This gets set aside in a rack for a moment while I work on the next step.

Using a rod of 12mm glass, I ball up the end to make a small marble that will serve as the base of the piece.   Once that’s formed, but still on the rod it was made on, I can move onto the next step.

At this point, I heat the tip of the beaded barbell I made and the tip of the base marble in the flame, and carefully bring them together, hopefully keeping them aligned and straight.    It doesn’t always go well, mostly depending on my coffee consumption that day.

At this point, I have a chess piece on a stick.

As you might have guessed, next I flame cut the marble off of the rod it was made on, shape it back to round, then heat the lower half and press on the marver to flatten it slightly.

Finally, I heat my tweezers, grasp the piece near the base and, hopefully, tap off the cold sealed punty, melt in the scar, and the place the piece into the kiln.

Just a little warning from experience, that cold seal connection to the top of the piece is fairly precarious, so be careful moving around your workstation that you don’t knock a piece onto your bench.

After cooling, the pieces look a little something like this

White side finished

Here’s another shot of the pieces.   I had to chuckle because with the sparkle it’s got that 70′s “adult movie” look.

Bead chicka

That’s it for making the pieces.   There’ll be one more installment to show off the other side and how they’ll be packed, but in a nutshell, that’s how they’re made.   I hope you’ve enjoyed it and learned a little something in the process.

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Feeling a need for a little retail therapy but hate crowds?  Click on over to the AGLF Etsy shop and have a look at the handmade goodies there.   There’s items across the price range including jewelry, sculpture, beads, and mini-ornaments, and all of the proceeds go towards the AGLF, which in part benefits yours truly.

Thanks!

Sorry to disappoint you, but tonight was a ho hum tedious session.   I’m still working on the replacement chess pieces, so if you’re interested stick with me.   But like Superman washing his tights in Woolite on his day off, sometimes things are dull.

I’ve gotten the beads made and cleaned, now it’s time for the next step, making the pieces.  Want to see how they start out?

Funny, those don't look like chess pieces

It’s exciting, I know.   But try to calm down, you’re embarrassing yourself.

These are the raw materials, 5 mm rod and 12 mm rod.  It’s fun to say rod.  Rod rod rod, rod Nicole Kidman rod.   But, back to work.

One quick plug for an absolutely awesome tool.   That nifty looking pair of pliers is actually one of the best glass cutters I’ve ever used, because you know I’ve used so very many of them.   But really, this thing’s awesome.   It has a cutting wheel built into it, so you grip the rod, give it a turn to score a line, then just snap it off.  It’s SO much cleaner than just using a scoring knife.

The JAWS cutter. This is the small one, I have a larger one as well

Cheap unsolicited plug over (it really is a good tool, check them out if you get a chance), it’s time to make some posts.    These are the pieces that the beads will sit on.   This particular type of chess set has pieces that are identified by the number of beads on them.  It goes like this:

Pawns: 1 bead
Rooks: 2 beads
Knights: 3 beads

You get the idea.   I’ll need 32 posts to act as a basis for the chess set.    In actuality I’ll wind up making a few extra because inevitably a couple of pieces go bad in their creation.

A post fresh from the flame

You’ll notice I’ve balled up the end of the post slightly.    Eventually I’ll make a barbell shape with the beads trapped onto it.   As luck would have it, a 5 mm rod is just about the perfect size to fit inside a bead made on a 1/4″ diameter rod.   So if you ball up the end slightly, the bead can’t slip off.

Here are some of the prepped posts waiting to go into the kiln.

Waiting to go into the kiln

Some of the more observant folks might be recoiling in horror from that picture.

• Tom, isn’t that paper towel a fire hazard?
• Tom isn’t that fiber blanket a respiratory hazard?
• Do these pants make me look fat?

Well you’re on your own for the fashion advice, but the other two are valid points.

The fiber blanket can be a respiratory hazard if you disturb it.   In this case I move it as little as possible, and it’s there just to cushion the pieces as I cut them off the rod with the wheeled nippers.  Also, where it’s located is still within the air flow from the hood above the torch.

And the paper towel?  Yes, it’s a fire hazard.    Off camera there’s a fire extinguisher though just in case, there’s a container of water within reach as well, and no, it’s not normally there.   But it does help me move the fiber blanket without it getting shaken up.   Thanks for caring.

And I think you look lovely in those pants.

Tune in tomorrow for the next step, placing the beads, trapping them on there, and finishing the pieces.  Thanks for reading!

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Hey, are you looking for a fantastic stocking stuffer?  Maybe a little bright eye candy for your otherwise dreary wall?  Consider picking up one of the 2011 AGLF wall calendars.   You’d be getting an awesome calendar (I bought 2 for myself) and helping out a rag tag bunch of 29 lampworkers stuck in a lawsuit this holiday.

Hot beads in the cool winter time

I had a chess set that I had put up for sale to raise funds towards the AGLF, in defense of the law suit yours truly is currently trapped in.   It wasn’t selling, so I put it up on eBay and it fetched less than half what I had originally been asking for it.   I don’t blame the winning bidder, but I am annoyed that overall the price was so low given the work involved, even though the money doesn’t go directly to me.    But, no big deal, I packed up the set and mailed it out and it arrived….with 9 pieces broken.  This is irritating enough, but the case they were in was still in good shape, and from the pictures I saw of the wreckage, it appears as if the package had been dropped from a height or thrown.

Lovely wasn't it?

Vent off.

It happens, we move on, and provide good customer service regardless.    To that end, I’m actually remaking the entire set.   I had offered to remake just the broken pieces, but the problem is that one of the sides has glass that strikes in the flame, that is, the glass changes color depending on flame chemistry, how long it’s there, a variety of factors.  So, if I remake just the broken pieces, they aren’t likely to match.  Lesson noted, but likely not well learned.

I figure since I have to remake them, I may as well get a little blog time out of it.    I’m trying to get these made and out into the mail by Friday, so this is the first of an installment series.

With that, we have to begin, and it begins with rods of glass.   Sorry, no picture and it’s nearly 1 am so I’m feeling a bit lazy, but I assure, you they’re lovely.    The beads in this set were made from Momka’s Silver Tears and GA Paris Green 6.  I know, if you don’t work with glass that means precious little to you.   Imagine, respectively a light blue rod and a green transparent rod, both of which are roughly the width of a pencil.   This is where we start.   That and 1/4 inch steel rods that have been dipped in bead release.

There’s obviously a bit more to it, but quickly, heat the glass, heat the rod, melt and wrap the glass onto the rod, and into the kiln they go to cool slowly.   Luckily the type of glass I use is a little more heat tolerant than some, and I can easily do 7-8 beads on each rod, so making the 86 I made for this set go relatively fast.   It helps the beads aren’t terribly fancy.

The beads that made it. The number on the towel is the quantity in the pile.

Once the beads have been cooled and extracted from their rods, a post in and of itself, they need to be cleaned, sorted, and dried.   For this particular set I needed 37 beads per side.   You’ll see from the image above I’m dead on for the green ones, having lost 4 to quality control problems.   I’m also over a bit on the Silver Tears beads, but that’s okay, I’ll find a use for them.

As you can see, the Silver Tears beads have come out just a tiny bit off from the previous iteration.  There’s a slight chance that this is because I switched torches for this.  I own two, a Nortel Red Max that I normally use, and a Glass Torch Technologies Cricket, a smaller torch that I break out from time to time for a change.

They're fairly close in color, but have reduced slightly with a touch of mirrored finish.

And here are the green ones

Pretty aren't they?

This is the first step on the way to becoming chess pieces.   Next time we’ll discuss the next step, turning clear rods of glass into something useful.

I decided, instead of compressing in the forms for my chess pieces, I’d use a hot piece of glass to burn in the inserts.

Trust me…

DON’T DO THIS

Even under a decent vent sucking the smoke out, it was still a stupid thing to do in hindsight.   The result was ok, but so not worth it.

Ugh.

Next time I’ll just use the doming set to press in the slots like I did for the set I donated.

Maybe I’ll consider trying this:

There’s sort of a philosophy behind them really.    At least with a Staunton-esque type set the pawns are fairly easy since they’re pretty utilitarian and generic.   Once you figure out the colors you want to use and get the shape down, there’s a zen like state when you bang out 8 of them.

The king and queen are fairly simple as well.   They’re simply a lazy and vaguely grand reflection of the rest of the set.  Given monarchs are so far above the rest of their subjects, aside from the color scheme they barely even have to match the rest of the set.

Bishops are their own little bastions of thought and sort of run on their own design wise, again, mainly staying within the color scheme, much like the way religion and government stay apart in today’s society (…in theory).

But the rooks and knights…..those require some thought.

Think about it.  The pawns are expendable, the monarchs are merely protectorates of the others, and the bishops, while mobile, really protect only themselves.   But the rooks and knights are offense and defense, side by side, and all over the board.

So the rook and knight get special attention when I work.  They sort of have to be right, and often they’re the hardest pieces to make.   Horse heads can be tough to do on their own, but the pieces need to balance vertically so the piece stays upright, and the rooks need to be simple but sturdy in their design.

The design of the pieces is only half of the problem.   There’s a lot of thought and experimentation that goes into the color choices.  The colors have to be compatible with each other, but they should be complimentary as well.

Once you have that sorted, you need to figure out how to apply the color.  Will all the pieces use the color in the same way or will the pawns differ from the rear pieces?  If you go that route, it becomes more difficult because the color becomes used for accents on the rear pieces, adding complexity to your design.

Ahh, so for this collborative set….what to do, what to do, what to do?

Tune in next time, and don’t burn yourself.

It was a lot of trial and error I finally managed to get the black side king done on my glow in the dark chess set.

This thing was kicking my hiney up and down the shop because I was having some cracking issues with the aqua glow.  I encountered high failure rates in some of the pawns, and the king had to be redone nearly half a dozen times because the glow accents kept cracking.

But, I received some good advice from Joe “Glow Joe” Imler on mitigating some issues with the aqua.

I’d like to say at this point, that it’s not necessarily a problem with the glass itself.  If it were, the way I’d work would likely have lead to 100% failure.   It seems to be batch related.

The suggestions….

• Clean your sticks.   Sometimes a little refactory material from the press molds sticks to the glass, and it’s enough to throw off the COE of the glass leading to a minor bit of incompatibility.  In a nutshell, the glasses will be of sufficiently dissimilar material that they’ll cool at different rates.  Since things contract as they cool, this difference causes stress and therefore cracks.
• Bring them up to temp.   Before you start working the glass, bring it up to temperature in the kiln and let it soak for a bit.  This makes the transition into the flame easier on the glass, meaning less stress and hopefully less cracking.

Despite this good advice I still got some cracking in what became the final king.  However, I was able to bring it up to temperature, fix it in the flame, and get it back down to room temp safely.

I think the results were pretty decent, though I’m not sure how enthused I am with the black I used.  The purple’s nice, but the black tends to be prone to devitrification.   I’m not really sure how best to prevent it either, though it didn’t appear in all the pieces.

Below are some pictures of the set.  If you’re interested, it’s currently available on my ArtFire site here.

White side pieces

White side glow shot (green glow)

Black side pieces

Black side glow (aqua glow)

Group glow shot

However, I had to ship it down to Florida to the person organizing the sale of various pieces of glass artwork to help him reach is goal.  So how do you safely ship a glass chess set?

Pieces in their case

I believe I found the solution by changing my mind.    The chest that the pieces are in has a glass top to it, but I certainly didn’t want this broken in transit.   The solution?  I decided to throw in the board I made to take pictures of the pieces on.  It turns out it fits nicely on top of the chest and covers the glass while still being elevated over it.  I like the box I used and will likely do it again.  You’ll notice there’s extra space in there, so it’s a good universal size.  But, it likely means I’ll either need to invest in some plywood or make sure that the boards are included in the purchase price I charge for these.

First I made sure that the pieces were all snug in their foam:

I had to put the business card *somewhere*

Then I covered the space in between the pieces and the glass top with another piece of dense foam, cut to fit, so nothing will shift:

Sorry about the blur

Finally, I layered a piece of plate foam, the chess board, and another piece of foam so I could wrap it in paper like a Christmas present.   This allowed me to secure the board and protect the box somewhat without attaching the packing tape directly to the wood  The plate foam between the board and the frame on the box helps keep it from shifting sideways:

Snug as a bug

This all went into a box with packing peanuts above, to the sides and on top.   Hopefully it’ll make it in the same number of pieces it left in!

My friend Joe is like many of my friends, self employed and uninsured.   The healthcare system in the US has it’s issues for sure.   You can read about his plight here.

So in support of my glassy friend, I put my current glowing chess set on hold to make up a slightly more simple set for him to sell to raise some medical funds.

The not to depressing part is that this was an opportunity for me to work on a set made with canes of glass as opposed to my current “coat as I go” method.   There are pros and cons to each.   With coat as I go I have a clear section at the bottom (if I so desire) which allows you to see up into the piece.  I don’t know why anyone else would want to, but I find it amusing.  Given I’m the one making them….it’s all me.   The cane method has a slight speed advantage, but less control over the entire piece.   You can prep canes ahead of time and then just start working.

This set, however, uses the cane method.

Laid out nicely

For the glass geeks that run across this, I used the following:

White side: Glass Alchemy (GA) Sex on the Beach over Colormax White.  The rear pieces have accents done in Sex on the Beach
Black side: Northstar Glassworks (NS) Loki’s Lipstick over GA Brilliant Blue.  The rear pieces have accents done in Loki’s Lipstick

The case is a box I obtained unfinished, then stained.  The insert is stryofoam that the pieces have been pressed into to help hold them in place.

Pieces in their case

The board is an unfinished piece I stained then painted on the checkerboard pattern.

This set, the case, and the board will be part of Joe’s For Sale stash.  If you’re interested contact him or Jessica at one of the addresses on the linked site.

White side

Black side