[TheForge] Glass [TheForge Digest, Vol 213, Issue 6]

[Mike Spencer]

Mark> Always wanted to work with glass.

Dick> I added glass blowing about 13 years ago on top of the 38 years
Dick> of blacksmithing. I play with glass more often than iron these
Dick> days.

I hitched a ride home from the 1976 ABANA con with a couple who were
keen to see the Blenko glass works in W. Virginia.  It was worth
the extra day on the roak to visit the works.

About that same time, I did a 3-day public demo adjunct to a craft
market.  They set me up in a fire-safe, wind-protected patio and put
the glass blower there too.  During the weekend, I forged a little
basket affair and he blew a bottle into it.  Regrettably, we stood
around admiring or work for too long, failed to get it into the 
annealing oven soon enough so it went PING and fell apart.

He gave me some basic instruction, let me mess about a bit.
Observation:  A blacksmith doggedly pushes the iron, inch by inch,
millimeter by millimeter, where (s)he wants it to go.  With hot glass,
you're constantly chasing after the gather/workpiece as it tries, in
conspiracy with gravity, to run away from you.

-- 
Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada       .~. 
                                                           /V\ 
mspencer at tallships.ca                                     /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/                        ^^-^^