Make a preparation. Blow into the tube and close it with your thumb. The heat will expand the air trapped in the tube and a bubble will form. This first set and bubble is called the blank.

• Once you have a bubble with even walls, you can use the rolling table again and collect more glass. Remember to constantly rotate the rod as you move it from the rolling table to the furnace and the furnace opening.

Refill with glass melt. Collect a drop of more glass melt. Required amount sets of glass melt depends on the desired size of the product - the larger the product, the more of them are needed.

• If you want to add a little color, now is a good time to apply it to a cooler "post" (cylindrical blank).

Form the bullet. When you have finished collecting the glass melt, moisten the newspaper and use it to form your workpiece into a pellet. Then heat it again in the oven opening. Don't forget to rotate the rod all the time!

Decide on the form. Form the product by rolling it on a rolling table while an assistant blows air through the tube into the glass melt.

• down on glass, roll out the sides, not the bottom. If the sides are colder, then when air is blown in the bubble will push out the bottom.
• If you want the bubble to move from glass, that is, to expand the walls, roll out the bottom. If the bottom is colder, then when air is blown in, the bubble will push out the walls.

Make the cuts. After molding the product, use special pliers to make a cut line on the neck. The diameter of the neck should be equal to or smaller than the diameter of the glass blowing tube. Keep rotating the tube!

Unfold the product and complete its production. This requires transferring your piece to another rod called a pontium. This is one of the most difficult operations in glassblowing. However, knowing a little professional secret makes it much easier. Find a small tool ( the best option– file) and dip it in water. Carefully draw a line around the neck. This will reduce the strength of the glass and make it more fragile. After this it will be easy to separate it from the first tube.

At first glance, it may seem that the production of glass requires very complex combinations of chemicals obtained in a difficult way. But in reality, glass is produced quite in a simple way using the most ordinary components.

Glass is an alloy of certain materials, cooled in such a way that the atoms in its structure group together in a chaotic manner. An interesting fact is that 95% of the Earth's minerals can be used in the glass production process. The most important of these are (silicon dioxide), soda, limestone, borax, boric acid, magnesium oxide and lead oxide.

It is noteworthy that the first glass was created by nature itself. About 450 million years ago, molten rock from the Earth's interior rushed to the surface and, with the help of volcanoes, pierced the earth's crust. When hot lava contained silica and quickly solidified, it formed glass that was as hard as rock. There is an entire mountain in California covered in volcanic glass.

Volcanic glass is called obsidian. This extremely hard and durable mineral is widely used in industry, and especially beautiful specimens are used to make jewelry. Due to its high hardness, obsidian belongs to.

Man has been making glass since ancient times. The Egyptians knew how to make colored glass more than five thousand years ago. They covered stone products, dishes with this material in the form of glaze, and sometimes made beautiful beads and other jewelry. Perfume and ointment bottles made from glass were already used in Egypt over 3,500 years ago.

The period of the Roman Empire (1st century BC to 5th century AD) was one of the greatest periods in the history of glass. It was at this time that man mastered how to blow glass and how to give objects a certain shape and at the same time make them the right size.

Glass blowing.

The process of glass blowing is one of the oldest human skills. But since modern mechanisms have been developed and the need for glass products has increased significantly, manual glass making technology has become a rarity.

When the glass is in a molten state, it can be processed different ways. For example, it can be pressed, blown, painted or rolled. For centuries, the main method of glass processing was blowing, which helped produce a wide variety of glass products.

The glassblower collected a ball of molten glass at the end of a straw and blew into it. Using his skills, he gave the glass the desired shape and brought it to the desired thickness. He constantly heated the glass to keep it in working condition for as long as possible. Then the master finished the processing with special tools.

Many types of glass objects were created in this way. Glass can also be molded into a desired shape. Surprisingly enough, window glass used to be made by blowing a long cylinder, which was then cut and rolled to form sheets of glass. Of course, the size of these sheets was limited by the strength of the glassblower's lungs.

Today, a similar process for making glass, called handcrafting, is increasingly used in the production of special scientific equipment or expensive, magnificent glass products. To date manual labor Glassblowing is a highly valued profession, and a person requires significant professional skills to work in this industry.

Manufacturing of glass bottles.

Over time, the need for glassware such as bottles became so great that every effort was made to create a glass blowing machine, which was invented in 1903.

The machine uses a vacuum to blow enough glass for one bottle. First, the neck of the bottle is formed. Then compressed air is supplied and the entire bottle is blown out.

After this, the resulting product is automatically fired and hardened, and then a slow cooling process occurs, which makes it durable. Such a machine is capable of producing more bottles in one hour of work than six manual glass blowers in a whole day.

Later, another machine was created to automatically blow out light bulbs, which allowed for wider use of electric light. The majority of all standard bottles, jars, jugs, glasses and other glass containers are machine-made.

Today, of course, there are many new ways to make glass, but this is the basic process. The raw materials for glass production arrive at the glass factory and are stored in huge tanks. The required amount of substances is measured, dosed, and then mixed in the correct proportion.

Broken glass, similar to that produced and called "glass scrap", is added to the mixtures to speed up the melting process. The resulting mixture is automatically fed into the oven. The molten glass then flows out of the furnace to cool.

It then goes through numerous processing processes, such as blowing, pressing, rolling, casting and painting - depending on the type of glass to be obtained. Thus, it is possible to produce both simple window glass and patterned glass, characterized by high decorative qualities.

I visited various workshops and factories, saw how jam and metal were made, saw how they caught fish in industrial scale, and how hemp is tested, and yesterday I visited an amazing place - an art glass workshop. Egor, a master glassblower, gave Petrograd community bloggers a tour of his workshop, where he creates wonderful and beautiful things from scratch that anyone can make under his guidance.

1. A complete scam!

Our acquaintance with Yegor began with a short introductory word from the master. He told us that he was self-taught, he learned from videos from the Internet, there was no domestic literature on glass as such, so he had to study Western literature. Communication with Russian masters from the Stieglitz Academy, for example, also did not work out, because... Those old guys believe that if they hire him to work or study with them, he will learn all the secrets of the craft from them and run off to create his own company, thereby creating competition for them. As a result, Egor did not fold his arms and go to the West, as many could have done, but having received several practical lessons from an art university teacher, he then began to create with his own hands, creating 3 furnaces and preparing all the necessary base.

2. The base is glass, of course. Egor buys American goods because... There are plenty of flowers, it’s of high quality, but in Russia everything is bad with this raw material, it’s not enough and you can’t get it. Glass is purchased either in the form of similar sheets or plates, or in the form of cubes, which in principle is the same, because everything is melted in the furnace.

3. Ovens are perhaps the most important component of the process. There should be at least three of them: a glass melting room, in which the temperature is maintained at ~1100 degrees Celsius, a furnace for heating workpieces, and an oven for cooling finished products.

4. All 3 ovens are electric, adjustable with this simple panel. By the way, the workshop is located in the building of the Union of Artists, and it’s cool. In addition to this glass workshop, there are others there.

5. The “cuckoo” stove got its name from the sliding doors that resemble a birdhouse))

6. The temperature there is decent, the oven is used to heat the product during operation. You can’t get inside, it’s hot, but Egor said that he and his friends stuck an action camera in there, wrapped it in cooling rags, and took some cool photos. Fire!

7. Actually, a long blowing tube, with the help of which the whole miracle happens.

8. Liquid glass is taken from the glass melting furnace by a tube and the process of creating a blank for the product begins. In our case, it's a vase!

9. Only a small amount of glass is taken, because there is simply no need for it in large quantities.

10. Then you need to bring the blank along the metal surface to the desired shape.

11. Glass is hot, and that means you can do whatever you want with it, including inflate!

12. Once again we dip the workpiece into the furnace and grab an additional amount of liquid glass, it is needed in order to subsequently move to the next furnace, in which all the action will take place.

13. Egor moves on to the “Cuckoo”, in which glass is blown and maintained in the required shape.

14. So far this is just a blank for a vase, that is clear glass, onto which a layer of colored glass will subsequently be applied.

15. Blowing continues until it becomes clear that the blank is ready.

16. Then, when the blank is completely ready, you get any colored glass to your own taste, in our case it is a 4-color blank from which the vase will be created. As you can see, our blank is literally stuck to the multi-colored workpiece and is already going into the oven.

17. In order for the blank and the blank to take the desired shape, they need to be united, as it were, by bending the molten glass around the blank.

18. Bent it, now you need to use dental tweezers or any other suitable tool to connect the edges of the workpiece to each other.

19. This is done several times by sending the product into the oven, then bending and joining the edges again, until it becomes clear that the blank and the colored blank are one!

20. Using antique scissors, Egor creates the bottom of the vase, as if squeezing the glass.

21. What next? Then you need to blow and melt for a long time and persistently until you understand that the wall thickness is already required. By the way, as you can see, the stove is on gas. One such cylinder lasts for 1.5 days on average. Due to the fact that the room is small, there is no way to store gas here, so every couple of days you have to refuel at the nearest gas station.

22. Molding is when a product is given the desired shape with wet newspaper. The frozen glass spins on the newspaper, cools, and at the same time takes on the required shape.

23. With some other dental instrument, Yegor applies a pattern to the vase, which we will see soon)

24. Once again, we need to dip our product into a glass melting furnace to apply a layer of glass, to give it gloss, as well as for strength.

25. And again molding. In general, the process is clear and simple - blow, twist, shape, cool. But at the same time, all this is very difficult, and requires care and experience, which you gain by making mistakes and achieving results. As in everything, however. Creative and interesting work, it’s not for nothing that Yegor stopped being an office plankton and began working with his hands, it’s cool.

26. Here the product, already with the additional layer of glass that we recently applied, is sent back to the oven.

27. It seems that the master realized that it was time to pull out the product. This is done in a rather cunning way - the tube, with the product at the end, quickly rotates around its axis, making several revolutions, thereby stretching to the desired size.

28. Then, to make the neck of the vase, you need to attach something like this to the bottom (on the left) so that there is something to hold the product by.

29. Meanwhile, on the other hand, the future neck of the vase is created with tongs, as if simply expanding it while the glass is liquid.

30. Go into the oven a few more times, then expand again, and voila, the elegant neck of the vase is ready!

31. The master and his product. In fact, red is yellow, and pale blue is a color closer to blue. When the product cools, it will take on the proper colors.

32. It’s time to cut off that thing from the bottom of the product; we no longer need it.

33. After all, the product is sent to an oven in which the temperature is maintained for a long time at +517 degrees, and then lower, lower, lower, this is necessary so that the glass gradually cools, otherwise it will simply crack and at this point the product will cease to exist. The vase created by us will reach room temperature in 8-9 hours, but we won’t see this)

34. Here, similar to our vase, are already lying on the stove lid. Diverse, beautiful, one might say - each one is unique in its own way. Pay attention to the round things on the bottoms of the vases - these are the remains of those things that were cut off in photo No. 32. In order to remove them, Egor later goes to another workshop, where everything is removed and cleaned by grinding. The vase is ready!

35. Broken pots that were in electric ovens, which became unusable due to the fact that the electricity in the building was cut off and everything was broken.

36. On the shelves are displayed various figures and products that were created here.

37. Cars, for example =)

Very cool workshop and Egor excellent master, who loves his job, educates others and is always happy to help. Contact him, every week he leads excursions to his workshop on Okhta, and together with you he will create something interesting as a souvenir that you will take home.

Everything about everything. Volume 3 Likum Arkady

How is glass blown?

How is glass blown?

Glass blowing is one of the oldest skills. But as modern mechanisms are developed, they are preferred, and as the demand for glass has increased, hand blowing of glass has become rare. Once glass is in its molten state, it can be processed in a variety of ways. It can be blown, pressed, painted or rolled.

For centuries, the main method of glass processing was blowing. The glassblower collected a ball of molten glass at the end of the tube and blew in the same way as we blow bubble. Using his skills, he, by blowing, shaped the glass and brought it to the desired thickness. He constantly heated the glass to keep it in working order. Then the master finished the processing with special tools. This is how many types of glass objects were created. Glass can also be cast into a mold and thus take on its own appearance. Surprisingly enough, window glass used to be made by blowing a long cylinder, which was then cut and rolled to form sheets of glass. Of course, the size of these sheets was limited by the strength of the glassblower's lungs.

Today, a similar process for producing glass, which is called “ handmade", is still used in the production of special scientific equipment or very expensive, magnificent glass works. But the need for glassware, such as bottles, became so great that every effort was made to create a glassblowing machine, which was finally invented in 1903. The machine uses a vacuum to blow enough glass for one bottle. First, the neck of the bottle is formed. Then compressed air is supplied and the entire bottle is blown out completely. After this, the bottle is automatically fired, hardened, and then slowly cooled, which makes it durable.

Such a machine is capable of producing more bottles in an hour than 6 people manually in a day! Later, another machine was created to automatically blow out light bulbs, which allowed for wider use of electric light. The majority of all bottles, jars, jugs, glasses and other glass containers are machine-made.