Making Fused
Glass Nuggets
How to make fused glass nuggets for use in glass jewelry and other glass fusing projects. Nuggets or little jewels as they are also called are simple to fuse in a kiln and can be used in a number of ways in jewelry designs.
They are usually comprised of two pieces of the same size, which are kiln fired to produce the finished shape. They do not need to be the same color; dichroic with a clear cover makes a nice jewel.
Fusing makes the piece contract, as it moves towards its natural 1/4-inch thickness it begins to assume a rounded shape.
Fusing:
The items were made from two 1/2-inch squares and fired on thin fire paper. Being two layers and usually small the firing time is reasonably quick.
On one of the examples the top layer is offset so as to create a stare shape, this is done to ensure the fused nugget is round. If the pieces are not offset then the nugget will be square.
Being small the they were taken up to fusing temperature (1460-1480f) reasonably quickly and held until they had become nicely rounded. The yellow and black squares were also 1/2-inch size; you can see that this nugget has fused with a fair amount of the black showing.
When firing some light and dark colored glasses together, the dark color will usually begin to soften first and may begin to move before some lighter colors which can take longer to absorb the heat.
Transparents can also be slower to soften in comparison to opalescent solid colors.
If you wish to apply a clear cap to the bottom layer cut the cap about a 1/8 inch larger than the bottom piece. By cutting oversize the cap will slump down and around the edges of the bottom piece.
Colored glass with an undersize cap will usually fuse with the bottom piece rising to meet the cap as per the black and yellow cap.
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