| Tips and Techniques
TECHNIQUES IN BREAKING YOUR TESSARE
Now that you have chosen your adhesive and tessare you are ready to break or cut it. Whether you use stained glass, ceramic tile, pottery, china, mirror, smalti or stone this following information will hopefully be very useful. There are many tools out there for cutting and breaking each of the different tessare. Here are examples of some the tools for breaking your tessare.
Side note ALWAYS wear safety glasses.
If you are using ceramic tile and they are full size tiles you will want to break them first with a hammer. To do so you will want to either use a thick suede glove putting the tile in your hand or put them on a few layers of newspaper on the ground (always glaze side DOWN), using a hammer hit them in the center of the tile. The tile should break into 4 or 5 pieces and from there you can either break them smaller with the hammer or use your tile nippers to create smaller more specific shapes.
If you are cutting glass or mirror you will need three tools. They are stained glass cutter, running pliers and mosaic wheel nippers. Each of these make it possible to cut glass and mirror into precise shapes and sizes. Using the mosaic wheel nippers you are able to nip your pieces within a millimeter of the shape you desire.
If you are breaking pottery or china depending on the thickness of each of these will decide which tool to use. If you have a thick plate you will want to use your tile nippers. If you are cutting a thin piece of china or delicate crockery you will want to use your mosaic wheel nippers.
If you are cutting smalti or stone you would use a hammer and hardie. These are two traditional tools used to cut smalti and stone into smaller shapes. The hardie has a cutting edge, like a stonemason’s chisel, fixed into a firm, heavy log of wood. The smalti is set on the hardie and using the hammer you carefully hit the smalti cutting the pieces into desired lengths and shapes.
Reminder if you want to purchase many of these tools they are for sale at the SBSMA supply store.
Stay tuned for next month for Applying your tessare…..
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