With great anticipation you open your kiln after a firing and to your dismay your work is lying there hopelessly broken into a dozen pieces. Once you get over the shock, you need to figure out what happened. You need to determine if the fracture happened during the temp up, or temp down phase. Examine one of the cracked pieces. Are all the edges rounded off or are they raw and sharp? Rounded edges indicate the break happened during the ramp up stage. The glass broke on its way up to 1000°F then continued to heat up to fire polish temperature. If the broken edges are sharp that means the fracture happened during cool down. Use this information to slow your ramp up speed or to extend the anneal soak time and/or the cool down speed for your next firing. This tip brought to you by Randy Wardell and the book "Fuse It" by Petra Kaiser.

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