Tools: Scotch tape glass clamps

I got this one from the redoubtable Carol Carson, who watched me struggling to find some way to hold together glass destined for a tack fuse and said, “Why aren’t you using scotch tape for that?” Why indeed?

Turns out that Scotch brand Magic Tape, the kinda brittle, translucent tape on everyone’s desk at the office, burns off completely in the kiln. That makes it an ideal choice for holding glass components together, especially when you’ve got a lot of fiddly parts that keep going anywhere but the right place. (In the shot above, I’m rolling this stringer/noodle/rod mat up into a jelly roll shape to make cane for murrini)

Or when you’ll be turning them upside down in the kiln in a flip-n-fire (below) and don’t want to risk superglue or other adhesives showing through the fired glass.

I’ve used this method to construct glass mold boxes, to assemble complex structures for tack-fusing and, as above, to simply hold the glass in place long enough to turn it upside down in the kiln for a flip-n-fire process.

I’ve never had this type of tape leave residue after firing. Since it burns off well before the glass softens, you don’t see an outline of the tape in your glass, either. And it’s great for lining up pieces just to get them into the kiln.

At left, I’m building a stack with powder, stringer, rod, frit and sheet and just taping the whole thing together like a sandwich. I’ve also just used tape as walls to hold in powder for these stacks, and as a barrier to hold in frit for pate de verre. It works amazingly well, it’s fast and it’s cheap.

If you use a great deal of tape face-down on the kilnshelf, you do sometimes get a bit of pale grey ash, rather like a scum, on the surface of the glass (as in the picture below). However, unlike devit, it will wipe off very easily with a swipe of a finger or a bit of window cleaner:

Disclaimer: I doubt I invented any of this; some is pretty obvious and the rest probably originated in Mesopotamia or something. If you know of an even smarter tool, please, please share!

 

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