glass guitar slide

[bexrox]

Hello everyone,

I'm working on a couple of ideas that combine two of my favorite things: glass and guitars! The one I am having difficulty with is the glass slide. I would like to develop a series of them that are both tonally wonderful, and of course, very pretty. I have no idea where to start.

I know leaded crystal is the best for tonal quality, but I do not have any. I do, however, have a reasonable amount of boro rods to start, and some medium to heavy walled tubing. I'm working on a Cricket with a 5 lpm oxycon, and it can handle boro, but I need to be very patient! All I need now is to know what the heck I'm doing.

Anyone done these before? Anyone know where I can find info/tuts/anything? Online, all I can find is how to make one out of a bottleneck.

Gonna post this in tips, techniques and questions too, so sorry for the redundancy.

Becky

[Cosmo]

I personally use a metal slide and much prefer it to glass.

However, for glass, I have used borosilicate tubing to make many slides, and I have only found one person who can tell the difference in the sound from leaded glass. Of course, this guy also claims he can tell the difference between a guitar with a lacquer finish and a nitro finish, so go figure...

I take a piece of tubing the proper size, cut it to length, and then flame polish each end. Then pop it into the kiln. I'm assuming you could use colored tubing to make them, or make slides with reversals and stuff, but I've never done that. Keeping the diameter of the tube consistent when doing that would be the biggest issue I think.

[swamper]

How about fused quartz? Really metaphysical? I don't really know but I just got some fused quartz rods yesterday and they are so clear and beautiful.

[Cosmo]

How about fused quartz? Really metaphysical? I don't really know but I just got some fused quartz rods yesterday and they are so clear and beautiful.

The problem would be cutting and polishing them. With my CC raging as hot as it will go, I can just barely get quartz hot enough to melt it.

[swamper]

The problem would be cutting and polishing them. With my CC raging as hot as it will go, I can just barely get quartz hot enough to melt it.

Cosmo, on my account, I think that is good to hear because I bought them for fuming - just hope I can get the silver and gold to stick to the end of the rod or I will have four 12" rods in the garage sale. I'm on a Bobcat.

[bexrox]

Thanks folks. Cosmo's description of the boro tube is pretty much what I had pictured, only I would love to make it pretty. I have tubing that's thick in the wall, and a little wider than I would need for most slide users, so that I could add prettystuff to it, then have some room to pull a little. I haven't worked with tubing before, though, and I am more than positive I will have difficulty with the consistency of the tube diameter / wall thickness once it's decorated and pulled. I had originally wanted to wrap my 3/4" and 1" diameter mandrels, and that would allow for keeping consistency, but there's no way in Hell I'm doing that with boro!

Do you think there would be sound and or safety issues if I used soft glass, even with a thicker wall?

Becky

[Listenup]

At the risk of sounding obvious (or maybe I'm missing something here), why not just use lead glass?
Crystal versus Glass (http://www.luckyglass.cz/en/crystal_glass.html)
Check Lead Glass (http://www.checkglass.com/lead-glass/cat_3.html)

If I'm remembering my dad's right, it's about as big around as my thumb and that thickness of glass should hold up.

[Cosmo]

Thanks folks. Cosmo's description of the boro tube is pretty much what I had pictured, only I would love to make it pretty. I have tubing that's thick in the wall, and a little wider than I would need for most slide users, so that I could add prettystuff to it, then have some room to pull a little. I haven't worked with tubing before, though, and I am more than positive I will have difficulty with the consistency of the tube diameter / wall thickness once it's decorated and pulled. I had originally wanted to wrap my 3/4" and 1" diameter mandrels, and that would allow for keeping consistency, but there's no way in Hell I'm doing that with boro!

Do you think there would be sound and or safety issues if I used soft glass, even with a thicker wall?

Becky

I don't think I've ever seen any soft glass with a decent wall thickness, but I assume it would work fine if you could find it thick enough. Most all the soft glass tubing I've seen was pretty thin.

[bexrox]

Actually, I was thinking to wrap the soft glass around a large diameter mandrel. I could make the walls relatively thick that way. Maybe I'll try. I'll post my results.

Thanks!
Becky

[valjean]

Hi Becky,
I would love to see what you come up with.
Fun times, to be able to experiment.
Please post photos when done........Valerie

[MerryFool]

Hey Becky...have you considered making them with the tubing, polishing the ends, and then using glass paints to paint the inside of the slide then firing them to set the glass paint?
Almost like those xmas ornaments that are painted on the inside through the opening at the top... They could be abstract or with designs...

Just a thought. Hope you'll share your experiments and Creations with us!