Determining the Amount of Glass
Needed for Kiln Casting
When kiln casting it's almost always
important to know how much glass it will take to fill your mold.
Sure, it's possible to top off the mold in the kiln by adding more
glass during the firing, but it's a lot easier to determine the
proper amount of glass prior to the firing.
There are several methods for
determining the amount of glass needed, but these two are used most
frequently. (Note that these
methods assume you are kiln casting, not casting by pouring hot
glass directly into the mold.)
1. Water displacement -- this involves
measuring the amount of water required to fill the mold, then using
a container of water to determine how much glass is needed to
fill the same volume. No mathematics is required for this
approach.
2. Specific gravity --
this approach also requires knowing the volume of water
(or other substance) required to fill a mold, but that figure is used to mathematically determine the amount of glass
to fill the same volume.
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Copyright 2005 Brad Walker.
All rights reserved.
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