Day Ten

Today I worked to prepare the tiles for use. I soaked the tiles that came glued on paper much like grids of button candy, and piece by piece removed them and sorted the colors in empty tofu containers. That was easy. The hard part was summoning the courage to cut glass - I have never done this before and I was quite fearful of flying splinters. Watching the YouTube videos helped dispel a lot of my reticence. Realizing that my tool options did not include "breaking nippers" my only option for cutting the 6" squares into small pieces was the big gun gadget Milos bought. I took it out of the box and studied the pictures. There were no written directions. I solved the problem that the machine was designed for thicker tiles by cutting a part of the heavy cardboard off the back of a sketch pad and setting it on top of the black foam grip of the machine work surface. My first cut was the most difficult as I squinched my face up and pressed, sliding the bar forward over the glass. I was relieved to hear that squeaky/prickly sound of the top layer of glass getting scratched. Then by pressing down on the handle the built-in breaking nipper snapped the split down over a slightly raised bar in the center. It worked, but there were incidental sliverings, many very fine, that remain as a kind of residue. I taped a cut-open a grocery bag to the board and slipped a piece of paper underneath too. Periodically I shook the minute shavings into a trash box I had set up under the table. Some of my cuts went better than others, but I never even got a cut or a splinter. Some of the glass cut more easily than others. The most difficult thing to do was cutting 3/8 inch strips and then cutting those into little squares. I ended up with some irregular shapes, but I probably will need some of these pieces to fill in awkward spots on the mosaic. I swabbed oil on the blade from time to time with a q-tip to keep it in good shape. In the image above you can see some strips of white glass I cut.