• Remember how to use the furnace,
• Experiment with different types of available glass,
• Work out how to determine the suitability of different types of glass. What criteria do I need to test?
• Work out whether I need to go down the road of creating my own glass.

I scrounged up:

• Lots of mirrored float glass,
• A 1.5m diameter hardened glass tabletop,
• Some (industrially) blown glass bottles.

I coated a stainless steel cup and bowl with kiln wash to stop the glass sticking.

I sanded off the silvering from some of the mirrored float glass, crushed it up and put it in the cup.

I crushed up a blown glass bottle and put it in the bowl. I washed the crushed glass in water and poured off the fine glass in suspension.

I experimented with chemically removing the silvering from the back of the mirrors. I daubed a bit of chemical on the back of the mirror and put some scratches through the mirroring with a screwdriver. The silvering appears to have three layers: Grey, red and silver.

Things that failed:

• Acetone,
• Methyl Ethyl Ketone,
  • This one changed the colour of the grey layer slightly.
• Zinc Chloride and Ammonium Chloride (in soldering flux),
• Ferric Chloride,
• Sodium Hydroxide.

• Fuse and temper the crushed glass,
• Compare the washed versus unwashed, and float versus cast,
• Polish the resulting slugs,
• Drop test.