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Falling Particles from the Top
of a Brick Kiln
This is
part two of a multi-part tip on falling kiln brick particles.
Click here to go to part one.
If you have a sandblaster available, it's an
excellent tool to use to remove embedded kiln dust
particles from a glass piece. It usually
only takes a few passes with the blaster to remove the surface
particles. Obviously, this will frost the piece, so you'll
need to re-fire to fire polish the piece and restore the shine.
If you don't have access to a sandblaster,
another abrasive technique that sometimes works is to use a diamond
hand pad. This is slower than a sandblaster, but is much more
even that a tool like a Dremel, which can dig into the surface and
is more resistant to smoothing out during a fire polish firing.
Other grinding and polishing tools (a handheld
water fed grinder, for instance) can work as well. The key to
success is to move the grinder around, rather than keep it in one
place. Also, finish with a grit of at least 220 (and
preferably 400); the finer grits will lead to better success with
fire polishing the piece afterwards.
Click here for the next part of
this tip, which deals with ways to prevent
kiln brick dust from falling onto your piece in the first place.
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Copyright 2006 Brad Walker. All rights
reserved.
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