Studio Tour

I know I said I would do this months ago, and I just haven't had the time really to do any glass blowing. But it's now early December, and this is the third weekend that I've gotten to blow glass. Additionally I remember to take some photos this morning.

The heart of any hot shop studio is it's furnance. I own a Mobile Glass Blowing Studio's Baby Dragon. It runs off of standard propane tanks and can easily reach the temperatures needed to melt glass. It holds roughly 30 lbs of glass. I use soda lime glass. I get them in nuggets that look like chunks of ice. I place shovel full of them in the furnace to heat them up to about 2200°f. Two 40 lb tanks of propane is more than enough to get a days worth of glass blowing. It takes roughly 5 to 6 hours to get the glass up to a honely like consistancy that I can shape into pieces.

On the right you can see the pipe warmer. Glass really only likes to stick to other hot things. To that end you need the tip of your pipes (and punties) hot otherwise the glas wont stick. The pipe and punties are from Spiral Arts and are made of stainless steel. Stainless steel is a poor conductor of heat which helps to keep the glass hot, and my hands cool.

On the left side of the furnace I have a small 1/4" thick plate of stainless steel to use as a marver. A marver really only has two uses: rapidly cooling hot glass and pushing hot glass around. You use it to push fresh gathers off a pipe or puntie, or cool spots that you do not want to get blown out.

The next important part of any studio is your bench. This is where you do most of your work. It holds my tools, and supports my pipes so I can turn smoothly.

Since glass is very hot most of the tools I use are made of metal. The way the tools are laid out are pretty much the standard for any glass artist.

From Right to left:

• Jacks - Used to form constrictions, open up holes, and cool parts of the glass.
• Tweezers - Used to hold hot things, twist and pull glass, and break things off.
• Diamond Shears - Used to cut hot glass.
• The Tagliol - Used for rapidly cooling parts of the glass.
• A puffer (Soffietta) - Used to inflate a blown form.

The last tool most glass artist have are blocks. They are made of fruit wood, usually something like cherry wood. Besides glass, it's one of the few consumable items I own. They will eventually burn down and need to be replaced. If properly taken care of they will hopefully last for many years.

Blocks are another tool we use to mold glass in to a particular shape. When we start we want either a Q-Tip shape, or a cylendar. Blocks allow us to take very hot glass and quickly form one of those shapes.

There are many ways to get colored glass since most places only melt clear in their furnace. One of the most common ways is to apply whats called frit. Frit is ground up pieces of densely colored glass. To apply you take a hot gather of glass and simply roll it in the frit. Or you can use something like a strainer to sprinkle the frit over the piece.

The last stage of the glass blowing processes is called annealing. Glass natually builds up a lot of stress and if cooled to quickly can break, or worse explode. To cool down the glass so it doesn't break we use an annealer. It's basically a very hot oven (Mine starts off at 966°f) and cools down in a controlled manner over about 24 hours. Once cooled down I can take them out.