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~ or ~ Boy, that's hot! |
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This is the furnace where the glass is melted. This particular one is small and only takes two days or so to heat the glass to approximately 2200°F. In glass there are three types of work: Warm Glass which is done using a kiln, Lamp Work which uses a torch, and Hot Glass which is what we did. |
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Gathering is the term for collecting the glass on the end of the blow pipe. It takes some practice to only gather on the last inch or less of the pipe. This makes it easier to clean the pipe for the next use. |
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This is a typical first gather, at least for our class of novices. Folks who know what they're doing can gather (in several gatherings) up to 80 pounds or so of glass! | |
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Moving the gathering to the marver. Oops, no larger version of this one. |
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Immediately after gathering the glass is rolled on a marver. The ones we used were metal, but a very fine grained marble is used in a lot of studios in Italy. This step shapes the gathering into a blowable form. | |
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Contact with the marver cools the glass immediately. Notice how the very end of the gather is less orange and looks more like glass in its normal state. |
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This stuff has to stay really hot; at 1900°F, it is too cool to work with. So your gather is constantly reheated. This is a glory hole where the reheating takes place. If I was better at doing this the pipe wouldn't be glowing red. As your piece get bigger through additional gatherings and being blown, the size of the glory hole becomes a limiting factor. | |
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The glory hole is hot - about 2600°F in this case. The pipe is constantly held horizontal and spun to keep the glass from sagging. |
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This shows the size of the glory hole we used. Obviously only small pieces are possible with one this size. Even small pieces like we made have to be reheated constantly. I probably had my pieces in the glory hole at least 20 times each. | |
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After the gather is shaped and then reheated you can start blowing. While very malleable this stuff is still stiff enough that you have to puff pretty hard to get the bubble started. To my surprise there is no danger of inhaling hot air - you'd have to really suck on the thing to do any damage. In fact, more experienced blowers often use short inhalations to get cool designs. Typically, a second gather is done after your initial blowing. Cooler glass will grab more of the molten stuff than hotter glass. |
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Here I'm hanging the piece from the end of the blow pipe and gently swinging it from side to side to stretch and elongate it. Sorry, can't enlarge this pic either. |
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In this shot I am cooling the end of the glass, then when I blow, the end will not expand. This allows for different shapes to be blown. |
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In this step the glass is shaped. We used a thick wad of newspaper which had been soaked in water overnight. The pipe is resting on a pair of rollers so the glass can be kept spinning. It's a little bit scary the first time you grab a glob of molten glass with your hand. The trés chic glasses are a specific color to protect my eyes from the wavelength light produced by the hot glass. | |
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Note the smoke! What you can't detect is the sizzle!! The glass is so hot that the paper burns right off! In traditional studios, wooden - usually green cherry - "blocks" of different sizes and shapes are used to shape the glass. Like the newspaper we used, the blocks are soaked in water prior to use. |
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In this photo, someone is using a pair of jacks to create a foot on the piece. The jacks are held motionless and squeezed slowly while the piece is spun. This step is repeated several times since contact with the jacks cools the glass quickly. | |
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Here is one of my two pieces coming out of the glory hole. It is really liquid at this point and trying to keep it in line is a challenge. This finished piece leans a bit, but what the heck! |
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In this shot I am opening the top of the piece. The jacks are pushed through the top, into the hollow I've blown. While the piece is spinning, I spread the jacks and try to keep the opening centered. | |
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Here I am opening the throat of my second piece. The color was added by rolling the hot, clear piece into a bowl filled with small chips of yellow glass. When some chips had adhered to the piece, I put it back into the gloryhole to melt the chips onto it. The yellow color appears orange because of the temperature. Note, this is how I would look with curly red hair. It's actually Tim's beard, as he leans over to give me instruction. |
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Working with soft glass was really cool. In these shots, I'm stretching the lip of the piece for a more artistic effect. | |
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When a piece is finished you use a wet file to score a line around the piece and then tap on the blow pipe. Where you've weakened the piece it drops right off the pipe. The glass must then be annealed using a kiln which cools it off gradually for up to two or three days. Our first gatherings were just dumped into a trash can and within 20 minutes these 3 inch balls of solid glass would explode with considerable force! The teacher, Tim, said he's had pieces he'd worked on for 8 hours break during the annealing process - bummer. |
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The class was taught at A Touch of Glass studio in Asheville, NC. Thanks to the owner, Gary Newlin, for taking the photos, thanks to the teacher Tim Lewis for a great weekend, and many thanks to Irene for thinking of such a great present and doing all the technical stuff to put this on the web! | |
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...the finished pieces! Not the best pictures; there's only so much one can do with a scanner. |
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Gary and Tim are holding a couple more sessions of this class in Autumn 2002. You can contact Gary at garglass@earthlink.net for more details. If you've ever wanted to do this, these guys can make it happen. You'll learn a lot and have a good time - I recommend it to anyone who's ever had a hankering to blow glass. |
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