Capping Dichroic Glass
Capping dichroic glass with clear glass may cause some unusual problems.
One of the difficulties that you may encounter is that the clear cap does not appear to cover all the dichro.
This may result in exposed pieces of coating on the edges of the piece or areas of dichro missing.
Dichroic is a metallic coating and the cap may not stick as it begins to heat and pull in and shrink during fusing, leaving some of the dichro exposed.
If the cap has enough overhang on all sides it may slump down enough to fuse on the bottom edges of the dichro.
Another way to handle this is to remove some of the coating around the edges of the so that the glass has a surface to fuse to.
I prefer to use 3mm clear rather than 2mm, particularly on ripple dichroic.
You may also find that the ripples do not completely close around the base of the glass and may be exposed due to uneven capping.
The clear cap can slump into the channels and there may not be enough to cover the dichro completely.
Some artists like to pre-fire ripple face down to flatten the ripples.
They fire at about 1400 F (599 C) for ten minutes to flatten the ripples, do not fire any longer until you are comfortable with this procedure.
Once flattened the dichro is then covered and fired in the kiln.
Another method is to fill the ripples with clear frit and cover it with 3mm glass.
This approach also works very well.
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