How to blow glass products. How is glass blown? Glassblowing work at home

Today we will talk about how to make glass yourself at home with your own hands. We will also consider methods and technologies for independent production of glass and glass products, namely furnaces, devices and tools for melting glass

In factories and chemical laboratories, glass is produced from a charge - a thoroughly mixed dry mixture of powdered salts, oxides and other compounds. When heated in ovens to very high temperatures, often above 1500°C, salts decompose into oxides, which, interacting with each other, form silicates, borates, phosphates and other compounds that are stable at high temperatures. Together they make up glass.

We will prepare so-called fusible glasses, for which a laboratory electric furnace with a heating temperature of up to 1000°C is sufficient. You will also need crucibles, crucible tongs (so as not to get burned) and a small flat plate, steel or cast iron. First we will weld the glass, and then we will find a use for it.

Mix with a spatula on a sheet of paper 10 g of sodium tetraborate (borax), 20 g of lead oxide and 1.5 g of cobalt oxide, sifted through a sieve. This is our batch. Pour it into a small crucible and compact it with a spatula so that you get a cone with the top in the center of the crucible. The compacted charge should occupy no more than three-quarters of the volume in the crucible, then the glass will not spill.

Using tongs, place the crucible in an electric furnace (crucible or muffle), heated to 800-900 °C, and wait until the charge melts. This is judged by the release of bubbles: as soon as it stops, the glass is ready. Remove the crucible from the furnace with tongs and immediately pour the molten glass onto a clean steel or cast iron plate. Cooling on the stove, the glass forms a blue-violet ingot.

To obtain glasses of other colors, replace cobalt oxide with other coloring oxides. Iron(III) oxide (1-1.5 g) will color the glass brown, copper(II) oxide (0.5-1 g) - green, a mixture of 0.3 g of copper oxide with 1 g of cobalt oxide and 1 g iron (III) oxide—black. If you take only boric acid and lead oxide, the glass will remain colorless and transparent. Experiment yourself with other oxides, for example, chromium, manganese, nickel, tin.

Grind the glass with a pestle in a porcelain mortar. To avoid injury from the fragments, be sure to wrap your hand in a towel and cover the mortar and pestle with a clean rag.

Pour fine glass powder onto thick glass, add a little water and grind until creamy with a chime - a glass or porcelain disk with a handle. Instead of a chime, you can take a small flat-bottomed mortar or a polished piece of granite - this is what the old masters did when they ground paints. The resulting mass is called slip. We will apply it to the surface of aluminum in much the same way as they do when making jewelry.

Clean the aluminum surface with sandpaper and degrease by boiling in a soda solution. On a clean surface, draw the outline of the design with a scalpel or needle. Using a regular brush, cover the surface with slip, dry it over a flame, and then heat it in the same flame until the glass is fused to the metal. You will get enamel.

If the icon is small, it can be covered with a layer of glass and heated entirely in a flame. If the product is larger (say, a sign with an inscription), then you need to divide it into sections and apply glass to them one by one. To make the enamel color more intense, reapply the glass. In this way, you can obtain not only decorations, but also reliable enamel coatings to protect aluminum parts in all kinds of devices and models. Since in this case the enamel bears an additional load, it is advisable to cover the metal surface with a dense oxide film after degreasing and washing; To do this, it is enough to hold the part for 5-10 minutes in an oven with a temperature just below 600°C.

Of course, it is more convenient to apply slip to a large part not with a brush, but with a spray bottle or simply by watering (but the layer should be thin). Dry the part in an oven at 50-60°C, and then transfer it to an electric oven heated to 700-800°C.

You can also make painted plates for mosaic work from fusible glass. Cover pieces of broken porcelain (they will always be given to you at a china shop) with a thin layer of slip, dry at room temperature or in an oven and fuse the glass onto the plates, keeping them in an electric oven at a temperature not lower than 700°C.

Having mastered working with glass, you can help your colleagues from the biology club: they often make stuffed animals, and stuffed animals need different-colored eyes...

In a steel plate about 1.5 cm thick, drill several recesses of different sizes with a conical or spherical bottom. In the same way as before, fuse the different colored glasses. The gamma is probably enough, but to change the intensity, slightly increase or decrease the content of the coloring additive.

Place a small drop of brightly colored molten glass into the recess of the steel plate, then pour in the iris-colored glass. The drop will enter the main mass, but will not mix with it - this way both the pupil and the iris will be reproduced. Cool items slowly, avoiding sudden temperature changes. To do this, remove the hardened but still hot “eyes” from the mold with heated tweezers, place them in loose asbestos and cool them to room temperature. .

Of course, fusible glass can also be used in other applications. But wouldn't it be better if you look for them yourself?

And to complete the experiments with glass, using the same electric furnace, we will try to turn ordinary glass into colored glass. A natural question: is it possible to make sunglasses this way? It is possible, but it is unlikely that you will succeed the first time, because the process is capricious and requires some skills. Therefore, take up glasses only after you have practiced on pieces of glass and made sure that the result meets your expectations.

The base paint for glass will be rosin. You previously prepared driers for oil paints from resinates, acid salts that make up rosin. Let us turn again to resinates, because they are capable of forming a thin, even film on glass and serving as carriers of coloring matter,

Dissolve pieces of rosin in a solution of caustic soda with a concentration of about 20%, stirring and remembering, of course, caution until the liquid turns dark yellow. After filtering, add a little solution of ferric chloride FeCl3 or other ferric salt. Keep in mind that the concentration of the solution should be small, salt cannot be taken in excess - the precipitate of iron hydroxide that forms in this case will interfere with us. If the salt concentration is low, then a red precipitate of iron resinate is formed - this is where it is needed.

Filter the red precipitate and dry it in air, and then dissolve it until saturated in pure gasoline (not automobile gasoline, but solvent gasoline); it would be even better to take hexane or petroleum ether. Using a brush or spray paint a thin layer of glass on the surface, let it dry and place in an oven heated to approximately 600°C for 5-10 minutes.

But rosin is an organic substance, and it cannot withstand this temperature! That's right, but that's exactly what you need - let the organic base burn out. Then a thin film of iron oxide will remain on the glass, well adhered to the surface. And although the oxide is generally opaque, in such a thin layer it transmits some of the light rays, i.e., it can serve as a light filter.
Perhaps the light-protective layer will seem too dark to you or, on the contrary, too light. In this case, vary the experimental conditions - slightly increase or decrease the concentration of the rosin solution, change the firing time and temperature. If you are not satisfied with the color in which the glass is painted, replace the ferric chloride with the chloride of another metal, but certainly one whose oxide is brightly colored, for example, copper or cobalt chloride.

And when the technology is carefully developed on pieces of glass, it is possible to transform ordinary glasses into sunglasses without much risk. Just remember to remove the glass from the frame - the plastic frame will not withstand heating in the oven in the same way as the rosin base...
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To make glass, sand must be melted. You've probably walked on hot sand on a sunny day, so you guess that to do this it needs to be heated to very high temperatures. An ice cube melts at a temperature of about 0 C. Sand begins to melt at a temperature of at least 1710 C, which is almost seven times higher than the maximum temperature of our usual oven.
Heating any substance to such a temperature requires a lot of energy, and therefore money. For this reason, when producing glass for everyday needs, glassmakers add a substance to the sand that helps the sand melt at lower temperatures - about 815 C. This substance is usually soda ash.
However, if you use only a mixture of sand and soda ash when melting, you can get an amazing type of glass - glass that dissolves in water (frankly, not the best choice for glasses).


To prevent the glass from dissolving, you need to add a third substance. Glassmakers add crushed limestone to sand and soda (you've probably seen this beautiful white stone).

The glass commonly used to make windows, mirrors, glasses, bottles and light bulbs is called soda-lime silicate glass. This glass is very durable, and when molten it is easy to shape into the desired shape. In addition to sand, soda ash and limestone, this mixture (experts call it “mixture”) contains some magnesium oxide, aluminum oxide, boric acid, as well as substances that prevent the formation of air bubbles in this mixture.

All these ingredients are combined and the mixture is placed in a giant furnace (the largest of these furnaces can hold almost 1,110,000 kg of liquid glass).

The high heat of the oven heats the mixture until it begins to melt and changes from a solid to a viscous liquid. Liquid glass continues to be heated at high temperatures until all the bubbles and veins disappear from it, since the thing made from it must be absolutely transparent. When the glass mass becomes homogeneous and clean, reduce the heat and wait until the glass turns into a viscous viscous mass - like hot iris. The glass is then poured from the furnace into a casting machine where it is poured into molds and shaped.
However, when producing hollow objects such as bottles, the glass must be blown out like a balloon. Previously, glass blowing could be seen during fairs and carnivals, but now this process is often shown on TV. You've probably seen glassblowers blowing hot glass at the end of a tube to create amazing shapes. But glass can also be blown using machines. The basic principle of glassblowing is to blow into a glass drop until an air bubble forms in the middle, which becomes a cavity in the finished piece.

After the glass is given the required shape, a new danger awaits it - it can crack when cooled to room temperature. To avoid this, craftsmen try to control the cooling process by subjecting the hardening glass to heat treatment. The last stage of processing is removing excess glass droplets from the handles of cups or polishing plates using special chemicals that make them perfectly smooth.

Scientists are still debating whether glass should be considered a solid or a very viscous (syrup-like) liquid. Because the glass in the windows of older houses is thicker at the bottom and thinner at the top, some claim that the glass drips over time. However, it can be argued that previously window glass was not made perfectly straight and people simply inserted them into the frames with the thicker edge down. Even glassware from the times of Ancient Rome does not show any signs of “fluidity”. Thus, the example of old window glass will not help resolve the question of whether glass is actually a highly viscous liquid.

Composition (raw materials) for making glass at home:
Quartz sand;
Soda Ash;
Thalamit;
Limestone;
Nepheline syenite;
Sodium sulfate.

How glass is made at home (production process)

Typically, scrap glass (broken glass) plus the above components are used as ingredients.

1) The constituent elements of the future glass enter the furnace, where it all melts at a temperature of 1500 degrees, forming a homogeneous liquid mass.

2) Liquid glass enters a homogenizer (an apparatus for creating stable mixtures), where it is mixed to a mass with a uniform temperature.

3) The hot mass is allowed to settle for several hours.

This is how glass is made!

I visited various workshops and factories, saw how jam and metal are made, saw how they catch fish on an industrial scale, and how hemp is tested, and yesterday I visited an amazing place - an art glass workshop. Egor, a master glassblower, arranged for the bloggers of the Petrograd community spbblog an excursion to 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. Furnaces 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. For now, this is just a blank for a vase, that is, transparent glass, onto which a layer of colored glass will later 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 =)

A very cool workshop and Egor is an 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.

Taken from nau_spb in How glass is blown

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Glassblowing is the art of creating glass products by processing molten glass. Glassblowing originated in the Middle East around 300 BC. e. Since then, blown glass products have become indispensable both in everyday life and for scientific innovation, and glassblowing has become an important art form. There are two types of glassblowing: lampworking and hollow tube glassblowing.

Steps

Blowing glass with a tube

    Collect molten glass. Using a hollow steel pipe or glass blowing tube, collect glass melt from the furnace in which the glass melt is located. The temperature of the glass melt in the furnace should be from 1380 to 1435° Celsius.

    • A simple but accurate analogy is wrapping an apple in caramel. Think of the steel rod as an apple and the oven as a can of caramel. Just like slowly rotating an apple in hot caramel, the steel rod in the kiln must be constantly rotated to ensure an even accumulation of glass melt.

  1. Form the glass. Once the glass melt is stable, transfer it to a steel rolling table and begin to shape it. Glass forming begins with rolling glass on a rolling table. It is important to obtain a symmetrical cylinder. Once you have a cylinder, continue to rotate the blowing tube to prevent the glass from running off.

    • The rolling table will take a lot of heat away from the molten glass melt, since when the glass is rolled on the table, both materials come into contact.
    • If the walls of the glass melt become too thin, cool them by rolling them out on a rolling table.
    • If the bottom of the glass melt becomes too fat, then place the glass again through the hole into the glass reheat furnace (designed to keep the glass in a viscous state), and focus on heating the bottom of the glass melt. While heating the glass, turn it all the time.

  2. 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.

  3. Refill with glass melt. Collect a drop of more glass melt. The required number of glass melt sets 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).

  4. 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.

  5. 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 is a 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.

    Align the edges. Heat the glass in the oven opening and straighten the edges with tongs.

    Cool the product. Cover the hole through which you blew air with your thumb, then carefully immerse the product in a bucket of water, keeping your finger on the blow hole at all times to prevent water from entering the tube and destroying the product.

    Beat the product off the tube. Using a wooden board, tap the tube firmly and your product will fall off the end.

    Anneal the product. Carefully transfer the piece to the annealing oven (an oven that cools the glass at a controlled rate) and leave it to cool overnight.

    Lampwork

    1. Use the lampwork method to produce small glass items. Lampworking is the process of processing molten glass over a small burner. Lampwork is used to create, for example, beads or other small items like paperweights. This section discusses how to obtain a small bead using a lampwork.

      Turn on the burner. If you have a torch that supplies oxygen and propane, you can use that too.

      Heat the holder in a low burner flame. Try to get a ceramic coated stainless steel holder. The ceramic coating will prevent molten glass from sticking to the holder when you want to remove it.

      Fire the glass with the tip of the flame to prepare it. If you don't fire the glass, it may crack due to thermal shock instead of melting. Burn for about 30 seconds.

    2. Start moving the glass closer to the base of the flame. Keep it on the flame until a nice orange ball forms.

      • Continue to rotate the glass so that it maintains its round shape.

    3. Attach the molten glass tip to the holder.

      • Place the glass on the holder and begin to wrap it around the holder away from you. Wrap until you have a complete cover of the holder.
      • Use a torch flame to separate the glass rod from the holder. It is easiest to separate the glass from the base when both it and the holder are in the flame.
    • When working on a product, do not forget to constantly burn it in a kiln or kiln hole; this prevents cracks from occurring.
    • Wet your hands before handling glass. This will reduce discomfort and prevent burns.
    • You can get colored glass by rolling your glass set in colored powder. You can also heat small pieces of colored glass and attach them to a glass blowing tube.
    • Have a partner help you transfer the glass from the blowing tube to the ponium (rod) to avoid cracks and breaks.
    • Glassblowing is an interactive process and the steps will vary greatly depending on the shape of the piece. The above steps are general glassblowing techniques. Search the internet for videos demonstrating different glass blowing techniques and the many shapes and styles you can recreate. Check out these online demonstrations for a great example of glassblowing art.
    • Try to get as symmetrical a set of glass melt as possible.

    Warnings

    • Glassblowing is a hot process, with temperatures exceeding 1350 degrees! Be extremely careful. Don't try to work from home. Find an instructor, especially if you're just starting out.
    • After dialing, never raise the handset above eye level; Molten glass can get on your hands, face and eyes.

The art of glass blowing is a complex, painstaking process. A similar technique dates back to the first century BC, it appeared in Sidon (now coastal Lebanon). From there the art spread to the Roman Empire and then to other parts of the world. The art of glass blowing is still practiced today and involves mastering a host of complex techniques. The most important thing in the work of glassblowers is to perform the work with a high level of precision and accuracy.

The process begins when a 4-5 pound tube enters the kiln where the glass is melted at 2200 degrees Fahrenheit (the temperature of lava).

This process is called collection. Once collected, glassblowers dip a blowpipe into hot glass until a decent-sized droplet is concentrated at the end. This is a very tricky part because the glass has the consistency of honey and drips easily from the end of the pipe.


In the next step, the glass blower begins to blow air into the pipe, creating a small air bubble inside the molten glass. This is a very delicate process: if the artist blows too intensely, then his work will fail.


One of the most difficult aspects of blowing is maintaining the temperature at the required level. By maintaining the temperature, the artist can shape the glass into the shape he has in mind. Thanks to the traditions passed on by glassblowers from generation to generation, this art never ceases to attract and captivate our attention.

At the beginning of December, glassblower and owner of the Steklou workshop, Egor Komarovsky, invited everyone who was interested and interested to his master class. The workshop is located on the ground floor of the House of Sculptors of the Union of Artists at the address: St. Petersburg, Zanevsky Prospekt 26, building 2. Egor said that artistic glassblowing is now not as popular and widespread in Russia as in European countries. He mastered the craft on his own, studying literature in English and watching video lessons from foreign masters; now he is open to cooperation, ready to teach and surprise.

All the stoves, and there are four of them, were assembled by Yegor himself in the workshop. An induction crucible furnace can be seen in the center of the photo. It got its name from the Crucible - a container for heating, drying, burning, roasting or melting various materials, in this case it contained molten glass.

In Russia there are about 8 colors of glass on the market, in American markets there are 120, the difference in quantity is quite noticeable. Examples of glasses and their colors.

Let's start the process of making a vase by heating the blowing tube. This is a hollow metal stick 1 - 1.5 m long with a mouthpiece at the end. We were shown the free blowing technique, which involves freely molding a product. Glass objects made by free blowing are also called free-blown glass (from the German hutte - gut, glass-blowing workshop).

Let's scoop up molten glass from the crucible furnace and start blowing it through the tube.

During the cooling process, the craftsman rolls out the cooling glass, correcting its shape.

Let's add more glass from the oven.

The glass ball is getting bigger and bigger.

The sequence at the initial stage is simple: dip, twist and shape, heat, blow...

In addition to free blowing, it is possible to use other techniques: Hand blowing into molds allows you to create products that are similar to one another. For example, laboratory flasks. The glassblower places molten glass on the tip of a glass blowing tube, blows a bubble and begins to shape it, constantly rotating the tube and molding the glass into wooden or metal molds.

Press blowing. The future product is first molded in a mold, and then hot - with air. The products are thicker and less transparent. But this method allows you to create relief decorations on them.

For heating, Yegor uses a “cuckoo” stove. It is heated to operating temperatures from +1100 to +1200 °C. The doors of this oven open if necessary, allowing you to place the product in the oven, rotate it in it, or place the product partially and without contact with the walls.

Gravity helps shape the glass.

A little more time and the ball turns into a drop.

The glass heats up, and during heating the tube rotates constantly.

Let's take glass plates of several colors combined into one element, attach it on top of the product and heat it.

After heating, the plate gradually bends and turns around, forming the shape we need when rolled out.

We form the product.

Roll it out again.

And heat the workpiece.

At each stage of work, constant quality and size control is required. When the work is carried out according to the drawn up project, the first version is initially made, which is broken down to accurately measure the wall thicknesses; after making adjustments and amendments, the final version of the product is made.

We heat it up again and blow it out little by little.

After blowing, roll it out into the desired shape.

We create a decorative pattern, pay attention to it on the finished product.

We form the ideal shape by gradually rotating and cooling the product. Cooling is done using wet newspaper.

As it cools, the color of the workpiece changes.

Let’s add volume, blow it a little more...

Let's add transparent glass on top of colored glass. The new layer will be the third, we will get it from the crucible furnace.

Gradually heating and blowing we get a rather large figure of the future vase.

We check the quality.

We form the bottom and secure the product to it.

Create the shape of the neck of the vase.

Last steps...

Annealing is heating to 530–580°C followed by slow cooling. With rapid and uneven cooling after molding, residual stresses arise in the glass, which over time will lead to the product breaking by itself, for no apparent reason. Annealing reduces these residual stresses and makes the glass durable.

After annealing is completed, the vase is polished and can be used for its intended purpose. The annealing oven in the workshop is electric, and when the power is turned off and the glass cools quickly, it becomes fragile and short-lived.

There are many different glass products in the workshop, all of them are made by hand.

If you want to create something yourself, for example, a ball for a Christmas tree, a glass or a vase, or vice versa, you want to learn how to work with glass, then Egor Komarovsky is happy to conduct individual lessons, excursions, and master classes for various age groups.

All details and contacts in the group

 

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