Filigree Stencil Designs

Glass Powder Filigree™ – Directions

Glass Powder Filigree is a fusing technique for making highly controlled glass lattice designs that can be used on their own or as design components in larger glass pieces. The instructions that follow teach how to master this technique using the Fusing Factory Powder Printer™. If you aren’t already familiar with the Powder Printer, you may want to watch the video to see how it works.

Process Overview

Glass Powder Filigree is achieved by creating wide powder wafer “outlines,” adding powder to the wafers to increase the volume, and refiring to full fuse temperatures. Surface tension causes the wafers to thicken into narrow chords while maintaining the overall shape of the wafer design.

Stencil Options

The nature of these designs is problematic for stencils because they typically have many “islands” – pieces that are free floating and not attached to the rest of the stencil. For example, consider this simple ring design:

To use this stencil, the center circle piece would have to be placed and removed manually, without benefiting from the Powder Printer’s easy alignment and stencil lifting.  There are two ways we’ve overcome this, with the method depending on the design.

Where possible, we implement designs as “Flip Stencils” where the artist sifts powder on the design and then flips the stencil over and sifts again. Here’s how that works:

In the first image (A), the stencil is positioned over the primed kiln shelf. Powder is sifted and the stencil is removed, with the results shown in image B. The stencil is then flipped over and placed back onto the Powder Printer, resulting in the setup shown in image C. For best results, place a square spacer stencil under the flip stencil to keep it from crushing the powder from the first step. Powder is again sifted, and the stencil removed, leaving the results shown in image D.

This approach allows for “floating” design elements and accomplishes it with a single stencil. For designs where flipping isn’t suitable, multiple overlapping stencils are used.

Make the Wafers

Here’s the sifted wafer ready to be fired:

Fire the wafer(s) according to the standard firing schedule:

Keep in mind that it is normal to have to adjust powder wafer schedules for the kiln being used. If adjustments are needed, it is best to change the segment 2 target temperature when adjusting these schedules. The ideal firing for this step of glass powder filigree is one where the powder particles are sintered together without any flow or glossiness to the wafer.

Clean the wafer using small diamond needle files and, optionally, the Wafer Workbench. Here’s the powder wafer after firing:

Re-Powder the Wafer

Set the wafer on something to elevate it above your work surface. A florist “frog” is ideal because it allows the powder around the edges to fall away from the wafer.

Sift powder over the wafer until no more powder will pile up:

Final Filigree Firing

For the next firing, take a freshly primed shelf and polish’ it with the heel of your hand in light, circular passes until a faint layer of dry kiln wash dusts the surface. These loose kiln wash particles will help the glass move evenly when fired using this schedule:

The natural cooling of the kiln is slow enough to properly anneal the glass.

Here’s the result: