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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Dear Stales,
Wow! Thanks for providing the link. I especially liked the $250 one that had been sold--not that I would ever buy a $250 fulgurite!--but liked it because it was more suggestive of lightning than the others and also because it reminded me of antlers, which are a constant passion of mine.
Anyway, thanks again!
DubDub
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 428
addict
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addict
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 428 |
I knew that glass was a very viscous liquid (at least most glass) and always wondered about how much activity really occurs in a pane over the years,
It's not only old churches that have drippy windows. Even 18C houses show evidence of the viscosity of glass. To go off on a little glassy tangent, if you know that a building's window glass is original, it can be used to (roughly) date the house. The earliest form of window glass is called crown glass. It was blown out in a large flat circle, and then rectangular pieces were cut out of it. This leaves concentric arcs of bubbles and other imperfections in each piece. The small central piece of the crown, called the bullseye (with a little nub from where it was attached to the blow pipe) was often used in transoms or front doors. Around the turn of 19C (I think -- I don't have my reference books here) a process was developed to make so-called cylinder glass. A large sphere of glass was blown, and then that sphere (still attached to the pipe) was swung back and forth in a heated trench, so the sphere would stretch into a cylinder. While still slightly molten, the ends would be cut off and the cylinder was cut down its length and unrolled to form a flat rectangular piece that could be cut to size with much less wastage. Cylinder glass, therefore, has long, stretched-out bubbles and imperfections in parallel lines. Drawn glass was developed c.1915, in which the glass was simply pressed into sheets with asbestos rollers and finally float glass (in which the glass cools on a bed of molten tin) was introduced in the 1940s. Float glass is the most optically pure, but it has none of the character of the old handmade glass.[/tangent]
Oh, and welcome back BY!
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Joined: Oct 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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RE: Float glass is the most optically pure,
Float glass is made by floating molten glass on large pans of liquid mercury. it float across the surface!
(clearly we have some glass fans here!)
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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The cradle of early American glassmaking was right here in South Jersey. The abundance of silicate sand, access to navigable waterways, and forests for wood led to a colonial glass industry here that boasted upwards of 225 glass factories well into the 19th century. One of the foremost of these was the Wheaton Glass Co. (my brother-in-law's name, but no direct relation to the glass moguls). Today there is a restored historic village, Wheaton Village, in Millville, NJ, where you can watch and study the art of Early American glassmaking. And it also houses the Museum of American Glass, with over 6,500 pieces of vintage glass for your delicate perusal! Here are the URLs for the full story. The museum link also has photos of some beautiful pieces. The other link describes the village, it's purpose, and gives a capsule history of Colonial glassmaking (no wonder you Brits didn't want to give up New Jersey!  ...like I always say, "Get Off the Turnpike!"®)  : http://www.wheatonvillage.org/museum/http://www.loc.gov/bicentennial/propage/NJ/nj_s_lautenberg1.html
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Joined: Aug 2001
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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floating molten glass on large pans of liquid mercury.
Helen, this is absolutely fascinating. Thank you!
Looking around, I found that sometimes a bed of molten tin is used. Does anyone know when did this "floating" process came into vogue, and why it was not practical earlier?
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veteran
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Stained glass windows in churches often suffer, after some years in a warm climate, from sagging as a result of the stretching of the lead framework into which the glass is set. This happened in our church. They had to be taken down and somehow ironed out to get them back into their original configuration. We were lucky none of the pieces of glass fell out.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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On Beacon Hill in Boston there are some very old houses and some of the window panes, original to the house, have turned a delicate lilac from sun .... and owners are very proud of them. They go to great pains (groan) to protect and care for them.
There is an old saying about glass and its fluidity when heated and its fusion as it cools :
"Any idiot can tie knots in glass but it takes a Master to untie them."
(neatly bringing thread back to the skill of glassblowers) {smug grin -e}
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Carpal Tunnel
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'Er indoors and I went to a glassblowing place in a village above Monaco called Éze last week while we were staying in Menton. The blowers were working right beside the retail counter and were very casual. But skilful with it.
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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I used to work for a glassblower. He was amazing. He also had a keen business sense. He said people buy 10x more if they see you blowing anything glass.
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