Any of your monkeys screw with glass making? I need some blobs of colored glass around an inch in diameter that can be faceted on one side to be inset in a piece. Need blue, green, red and yellow. I don't really want to learn a new hobby if I don't have too. I had a local glass weirdo, but he was more interested in making bongs, dildos and ear gages. Thanks!
lol... No andy, not bongs... lmao. BLOBS... here is a sketch I did of an idea I have. I'd like some colorful glass blobs I can inset into the shade and possibly the trunk. It's a table lamp of cast bronze. The style is a throwback to circa 1910 austrian chunk jewel. I just learned this glass stuff is called lampworking. Is this something I can do with a torch and some broken bottles or do I need special glass. borosilicate I think??
What you're looking for is someone who does hot glass work. Find a local stained glass studio. Dollars to donuts, they'll be able to put you onto a local hot glass worker who can fix you up. You might even be able to trade bronze work for hot glass work.
Good idea. I think I might have found an old lady that does this stuff in my town. Hope she's still alive.
I started doing a bit of glass with the girlfriend. She likes making glass beads with oxy/acetylene. I need to repair my small programmable kiln after the clay melt down issue before I can anneal the beads and see if they last. It isn't too hard to do, but annealing has to be fairly well controlled or the glass will shatter at some point in the future. Would be cool to do more with glass. Let me know how you make out with your glass project idea. I might follow in your foot steps
I was just joking, I have no glass skills. I've wanted to do glass blowing. But I think you should try heating up an old colored glass bottle and work it with tongs. I'd like to see the video.
You wanna watch me burn myself.. I know it. Zap what's the annealing schedule look like? Get it hot, slow cool? How hard can it be? We pour bronze ffs.
I don't want to watch you burn yourself. That would be cruel and routine. I want to hear you scream and shout bad words, though.
I did a little reading. It looks like blobs of glass may be self annealing but basically heat to about 900F and slow cool for several hours. Like in a refractory lined furnace. My shop fire in '89 left some Coke bottles with bent necks. They did not continue to fracture with age. You should be able to get a nice variety or glass from beverage bottles. Should be able to heat it in a crucible and pull some out to press into a blob shape then anneal the blobs in an empty furnace as it cools. I'll let you know how it goes...
lol when you put it like that anything sounds easy. I haven't done an annealing batch yet so I don't know how it plays out. I found and saved the info on temperatures and cool downs somewhere and it seemed fairly involved. People on glass forums were quibbling over 10 degrees F around the critical temperature. Which sounds like an e-peen contest to me but who knows? I won't know until I try it.
I saw someone with one of those melted bottle spoon holders and thought it would be fun to melt some bottles in my kiln that I use for heat treating. Then I saw this video that I also though was pretty cool. And check out the bird at 8:45; that looks really cool. I am too deeply vested in iron castings right now to start with glass, but it would be fun. I think it would be too much of a distraction from the metal casting though. .
My old boss used to flatten wine bottles in the kiln upstairs to make cheese serving trays. Live your dream and fire that glass good and flat.
Hell I can do this.. I was only using propane dorking around with a marble in the garage.. Found a new use for a tig cup..
