Glassblowing

Okie Dokie, as promised I took a few pictures of the glass blowing equipment that you need and, let you know how you go about blowing glass. Glass art is a very old artform, and can be traced back to the ancient romans... or something like that, and aside from the improved heating technology not very much has changed since then. First things first, the most important tools to a glass worker are gravity and cetripetal force. Because of these natural phenominae it is important to turn the glass only as fast as it fall off center from the pipe or punty. one of the next important tools to a glass artist is the furnace, where you keep the crucible where molten glass is stored. The one at fresno state is kept at around 2150 degrees fahrenheit, and this is a picture of it.

when you take glass out of the furnace it is called a "gather" and it's a lot like taking honey out o a jar with a toothpick provided that the honey is very viscous, and the honey jar isn't melt-your-face-off hot (that is seriously how most of the girls describe their first gather "I felt like my face was going to melt off"). Once you've gathered enouh glass to make you peice big enough you need to be able to keep it hot, and that is done in a heating drum affectionatly referred to as the "Glory Hole." there are several different set ups for the doors and whatnot, but this is the one that I like the most.

Needless to say, bigger peices require bigger openings and why buy multiple gloryholes when you can get different openings? This one is my favorite becuase the doors are hydraulicly opereated and open at the push of a pedal on the floor. Glory holes usually run at about 2400 degrees. Once you are done with the peice that you are working on you put it in the annealing oven which cools down the peice uniformly so it doesn't explode. ours looks like this...

there are various tools that you use to pinch, pull, flatten, cut and shape the glass in order to make it look like the thing that you want it to look like. here are some pictures...

this is called a bench, you sit on it while you work with the glass. it also has a place where you can put the tools and stuff. You should also have access to an air compressor to help cool down the glass in localized places.
this is called a marving table. you roll the glass on it to keep it straight in relation to the puny or pipe that you are working on. You also lay out frit, which is small bits of colored glass,on its surface. you roll your glass in the frit and you will be able to pick it up and it different size frits give you different effects. powders give you more of a tint, wheras bigger chunks make polkadots. The steel of the table also tents to be cold to the touch so it also helps to control the temperature of the glass that you are woking with.

this is a pipe cooler. sometimes when you gather out of the furnace, or if you are heating in the glory hole the pipe gets really hot and you need to cool it off so you don't burn yourself. anyway this basically runs water up through this appartatus and you lay your pipe in it and it gets cooled off.

this is a paddle for when we misbehave... just kidding we use this to flatten certain things, like when we open up lips on blown peices and they are crooked then this helps to straighten them out. it's pretty much a portable flat edge.

these are called blocks, and they are used to make the glass into more of a bulb shape. this is very important when you are making blown peices. it is imperative that the peice is on center and domed off on the end so that the peice doesn't get thin in one spot and not in another. it also helps to keep a solid peice on center. they come in different shapes (more spherical), and in different sizes.

these are called jacks, they are used to make "jack lines"which are spots where you pinch the glass and make jack lines, which are places where you might break a peice off or make a neck on a vase. they are all flat on the end towards the handle so they can be used to flatten peices in localized places. these might be one of the most important hand held tools in the glass shop.

these are called penssieries, and are essentially heavy duty glass foreceps. you use these to hold and pull glass.

these are called diamond shears because when you open good ones up there is a cockeyed square shape that looks like a diamond. incidentally all of our good diamond shears dissappeared over christmas break and we are stuck with kinda half-rate ones. even so they do the job so I can't complain. these tools compete with the jacks for the most important hand held tools of a glass blower. these tools pretty much cut the glass, but they cut more like a guillotine than scissors. they also have an openeing anterior to the cutting edge to hold punty rods while you put hot bits of glass on a peice for patches or punties or leaves or fins on a fish.

these are called duck bill or lip shears. they cut more like scissors than the diamond shears. they are called duck bill shears because they are convex and form a complex that looks like a duck bill. tin snips also serve the same purpose but with much less finesse.

For the most part these are all of the tools that you use in the glass shop, and what you do with them. bear in mind that when you use these tools, especially the marver, and the blocks that it takes a very dlicate touch and by no means should you manhandle the glass. it gets all discombobulated when you do that and you mess everything up. it's kinda late now and thistook me so long to do. i'm pretty tired so i guess i'll finish tomorrow.