Question for Horoscope Fish

[MENTION=13090]Horoscope Fish[/MENTION] my local school is offering a class on Blown Glass Ornaments for adults in the community. Since I've seen your photos of blown glass, is it difficult to do? I'm interested in taking the class. It's 2 hours per night for 2 nights and supposedly allows people to create 10 ornaments. Thanks for any information.
Cindy

hark said:

[MENTION=13090]Horoscope Fish[/MENTION] my local school is offering a class on Blown Glass Ornaments for adults in the community. Since I've seen your photos of blown glass, is it difficult to do? I'm interested in taking the class. It's 2 hours per night for 2 nights and supposedly allows people to create 10 ornaments. Thanks for any information.

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Hey Cindy...

It's a little hard to tell what you'll be doing in your class based on your description but I'm thinking this class may be one on "lampworking"...

Lampworking means you'll be sitting a workbench using a torch to soften bits of glass in order to form them. It's much easier to set up because it doesn't require a large kiln for holding glass batch (which require a lot of natural gas, attention and ongoing maintenance), only annealing kilns.

Glassblowing, on the other hand, refers to gathering a glob of glass on a long steel pipe, called a "punty", from a kiln that typically holds several pounds of molten glass. This requires a much more elaborate setup and this is why I'm wondering if you might be doing lampworking instead; a glasslbowing studio is a significant financial commitment. Still, it may be a full on glassblowing studio and if so, so much the better in my opinion! Lampworking is fun but glassblowing is just fantastic!

How difficult this process will depend on the type of ornament you're going to be making. Lampworking is much more suited to fine, delicate work than glassblowing is and you don't have the same issues with heat and the hardest part of glassblowing IS the heat. I could type all day about how hot it gets doing a gather while standing in front of a glass kiln, but there's really no describing it. You know what it's like when you're standing over the oven and you open the door to pull something out; that hot blast you get right in your face? Yeah... Magnify that about 1,000 times, bear in mind you'll need to stand there for several seconds and just... TAKE IT... And you'll start to have some idea of just how uncomfortable it can be. Still, don't let this dissuade you! Glassblowing is UH-MAAAAAAZING!!! I would urge you not to miss an opportunity to try it.

Sounds like fun. I've always been fascinated by molten glass. I used to melt bottles and other glass stuff with my welding torch back when I had too much time on my hands, lol.

Just the other night my wife said she wants to go check out the gallery at this place when it gets cooler:
Hudson Beach Glass, Functional & Sculptural Hand Cast Glass Made In Beacon, NY

Its one of those local attractions that is so close that we never think about going there. I see they have ornament classes, you might to take a look just to compare.

nickt said:

Sounds like fun. I've always been fascinated by molten glass. I used to melt bottles and other glass stuff with my welding torch back when I had too much time on my hands, lol.

Just the other night my wife said she wants to go check out the gallery at this place when it gets cooler:
Hudson Beach Glass, Functional & Sculptural Hand Cast Glass Made In Beacon, NY

Its one of those local attractions that is so close that we never think about going there. I see they have ornament classes, you might to take a look just to compare.

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That looks like a nice studio... The beads are a product of lampworking while the pictures below, where there are two people working together, that's glassblowing.

I'm not sure what, exactly, is meant when either studio refers to an "ornament"... I've been thinking of the typical red/green/gold/silver glass balls and those are so thin and light I can imagine a professional blowing one, much less a novice so they must be referring to some other type of ornament.

At any rate, the cost of those classes is quite reasonable... If you're considering taking one allow me to urge you to do so. It's an experience like no other, bordering on addicting!

Horoscope Fish said:

That looks like a nice studio... The beads are a product of lampworking while the pictures below, where there are two people working together, that's glassblowing.

I'm not sure what, exactly, is meant when either studio refers to an "ornament"... I've been thinking of the typical red/green/gold/silver glass balls and those are so thin and light I can imagine a professional blowing one, much less a novice so they must be referring to some other type of ornament.

At any rate, the cost of those classes is quite reasonable... If you're considering taking one allow me to urge you to do so. It's an experience like no other, bordering on addicting!

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Thanks. We'll definitely check it out when the summer winds down. They do demonstrations as the holiday season comes around.

Thanks for the comments.

All I can tell you from the class description is this:

Glaskolben glass tubes make it easy for beginners to experience this old world craft. Using the hot head torch, students will learn to heat the glass and then blow to create shapes. Each student will have the chance to experiment with shapes and colors to create 10 unique ornaments.

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Are you familiar with this process, Fish?

hark said:

Thanks for the comments.

All I can tell you from the class description is this:



Are you familiar with this process, Fish?

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Yes, I'm familiar and now everything makes sense.

Glaskolben tubes are pre-blown glass cylinders with a blow pipe at one end and a bulb on the other. What you'll be doing is heating the bulb-end of your tube over a bench-mounted propane torch. Once the bulb is hot enough (orange stage) you will be able to manipulate it with hand tools (pinching, twisting, etc.) or by blowing into the attached blow-pipe to make a hollow sphere. You will probably add what's called "frit" into the bulb before you start heating it which is powdered color; when heated it melts into the clear glass to give it permanent color.

Once you're done blowing your ornament-to-be will go into a small oven called an "annealer". The annealer cools the glass down slooooooowly. Hot glass is highly stressed and if it cools too rapidly it will, quite literally, explode. This is bad. I can't even tell you how bad this is. But don't worry because that's not going to happen.

Can't wait to see your ornaments!

Edit: Found you a picture... Glaskolben tubes come in different shapes and sizes but this is one of the more common ones:
....

Just a quick update on this. Tonight was the first glass blowing class which was interesting and fun. There will be a total of 10 ornaments made during the two classes (the final class will be next week). Tonight we made three ornaments, but the instructor did a lot of taking and demonstrating which took time.

The process [MENTION=13090]Horoscope Fish[/MENTION] mentioned is pretty much how it was done. The instructor mounted propane tanks to the tables and gave us the tubes which we filled with whatever colors we chose. Once the tubes were heated and blown (we only did round ornaments), they were inserted into some type of material that allowed them to cool slowly.

My first ornament was a dud. I don't think I heated it evenly so one side was softer than the other. When I blew it, the one side expanded much more than the other which left it extremely thin. It wound up breaking during the cooling process, but I could tell that side was much thinner than a piece of paper. The other two I made turned out pretty well.

I asked if I can take my camera next week, and she was quite fine with that. Tomorrow I will try to take a photo of the two ornaments during the daytime. Thanks again for the info, Paul.