Need help identifying some glass
 

Hey boro gurus, I have a mystery. My dad gave me three small boxes of "Boroflow" dichroic glass. He said he bought it in Southern California in the late '90s. It looks like a scrap sampler of all the colors plus clear sheet for fusing. I can't find any information on this on the internet and the only thing marked on the pieces are production numbers. Anyone heard of this? Thanks for any info you may have!

It's not for fusing... fusing boro is a beast... I would guess it was made for the lighting industry if it wasn't intended for melting... if it's 33 COE boro and the coating is good, melt it. ;)

Yeah, I'm wondering if it isn't COE 33 because there is a little fused sample panel in one box. The only Boroflow I see when I google is scientific glass.

Try melting some or pulling some stringer with 104 and see if it crumbles apart perhaps?

Good idea - I've got some clear to play with along with my stash of 90, 96 and 104 COE glass and some boro samples so maybe an afternoon of testing is called for.:) Temps are in the upper 90's today and dropping this week so I may actually bust out the torch!:lol:

How do they use dichro in the lighting industry? Is it for sconces and light fixtures? Wouldn't it be cool to have dichro lightbulbs!:lol:

Love to see pics of all the shining treasures!\\:D/

I'll see if I can get some decent photos.:)

Dichroic is used for stage lighting filters. I've heard mixed reviews on it, but if it's a freebie go to town!

Hey, thanks for the info! I had no idea dichro was anything but decorative.:)

They use it inside projection type lights with patterns or images... but normally the lighting dichro flakes off and doesn't tolerate the torch very well. ;)

it won't be what you have, but they also use dichro coating on the inside of low voltage halogen lights.
http://s2.static.mymemory.co.uk/imag...1265196838.jpg

Okay, I've seen that and totally not realized it's dichro!

That's what I've always heard about boro too, but people have been having some good luck fusing it in microwave kilns.

Check out this thread on the melting pot.

http://www.talkglass.com/forum/showthread.php?t=34430

All of that work was done with just a microwave kiln and borostix.

I'm new here, so I'm not sure if you work boro or not CarolS, but you could run some rudimentary compatibility tests pretty easily.

Just take a small chunk of the glass, and heat it in a propane only flame. If it melts into a gather(not just softens the sharp edges), chances are it's not boro. If it does melt, hit it with a propane/oxy flame and melt it into a small gather, and then attach that gather to another small gather of boro (so you've got them sandwiched together). Heat them up being careful not to twist, then pull a very fine stringer so both gathers are being pulled out parallel to each other. Let it air cool and observe what happens. If it stays straight, it's probably boro. If it bends, chances are it's not boro (since the different COE's are going to cause it to expnad and contract at a different rate).

If it doesn't work with boro, try it with a few other COE's. It may not work with any of them if it's not intended for melting, but at the same time, ya never know.

I got to play with Shelbo and the boys out in Tucson... we made some pretty cool stuff in that little microwave kiln... but it's just kind of a novelty at this point... fun stuff though... :D

True, true. I just figured it was worth mentioning.

Hi Icarus! Thanks for the tip on the propane flame test. I don't work boro - I've only played with it a couple of times. I just switched to a Cricket with tanked oxy and am looking forward to playing with it some more. Plus we are having our first week with temps below 100 degrees so it's time to play!

Sweet! I've really been interested in one of those crickets, so I'm interested to see what your thoughts are on it. Good luck with the mystery glass. The good part is, at least you can be reasonably sure the glass is compatible with itself. So while you may not be able to incorporate the glass into pieces that use COE 33 or COE 104 or whatever, you can still make pieces using just the glass in the kit. Annealing it may be another issue entirely (since if the COE can't be figured out, setting up a ramp and soak cycle for it would be a crap shoot), but its still worth trying out.

Have fun.

Thanks! I'll let you know how the Cricket does after I get over the learning curve!