The Opelousas courier., 1891-01-10
MAKING GLASS BOTTLES.
RARE GOOD JUDGMENT REQUIRED
IN THEIR MANUFACTURE.
The Singular Process Fully Described

-skiliful Use of the Blow-pipe-
The Workers and Their Wages. /
Only in a few places in the country
can sand be found, which will be avail
able for the manufacture of glassware.
Fine as is the sand around Lake Mlchl-
gan, it is quite useless for this purpose:
as the Herald writer was informed, and
that at Millington, Ill, has been selected
by the Chicago Glass Manufacturing
C~ompany-the only concern of the kind
in the city-as the best in the West, 1t
is of a peculiarly pure white character,
very clean and of exceedingly fine grain.
1t is digged from the pit at Wilmington
by cheap labor, is loaded on board the
cars there and hauled to Chicago. Here
it is shoveled from the cars and passed
thr ough a screen. 1t is placed on an ele-
yator and carried up to the second story
of the building, where men mingle with
it the ingredients needed to make it ready
for the furnaces.
Soda, ash, lime, arsenic and mangan-
csc are mixed with the sand in a proper
ton which is not generally discovered
outside, and which is one of the secrets
of the business. The mixture is then
carried to the furnace and loaded into
the pots, each of which will hold about
two barrels of the material. Eighteen
hours of the ~fercest heat are required to
melt it, and then the blowers are ready
for work.
But some other things are to be con-
sidered before this stage has been reached.
Each of the pots in which the glass is
melted costs the company 800. They
are made of German clay, by hand, and
are the product of Pittsburg workmen.
One pot is expected to last ten months,
| the full limit of the season, but some Of
them will break before they have been IN
service for a day. When broken the pot
must be lifted out of the furnace and d
new one, heated red hot and thoroughly
tested, must be swung in its place. For
| the heat in the furnace is never allowed
to 60 down from the time the shops are
started up in September till they Aut
| down in June. A great chimney, itself
shaped like a round glass bottle, forms
the centerpiece of the factory. At its
base a fire of intense heat is made by the
burning of crude petroleum, sprayed into
the furnace by a column of air. Right
up through the center of the chimney is
a hollow space called the ''eye," and
abutting ON these are the pots filed with
material for melting. The hot air which
escapes at the top is caught by 2 canopy
and sent back again to mingle with the
oil, and furnish fuel over and dker again.
The pots form the cilcuit OF the fur
mace and each of them is called a shop.
| Three men work at a shop-one of them
is a iourneyman and the other two are
apprentices. Each is supplied with a
blowpipe of iron. 1t is simply a hollow
rod some four feet long, n end smoothed
for contact with the lips, and the other
made somewhat larger. The blower
trusts this larger end into the boiling,
LIQUID glass, turns it round for a moment
and takes out a quantity of material SUIT
fcient for the sized bottle which he is
exeected to make. Here is one of the
incest bits of judgment on record. A
| good workman will know when he has
enough glass to make a h%alf-ounce bottle
and will lift it out on the end of his pipe,
roll it and form it for a moment on his
iron table and will then place it in the
mold, blow it into shape and lay down
his pipe, without having taken 8 grain
too much or too little.
If he takes too much there is a waste,
and he will have to answer for that in
the long run. If it be too little there
will not be enough to make the bottle of
the required weight, and he will lose on
that also, as every bottle is weighed be-
fore it has, left the shop. One thing
about this latter consideration is thatthe
bottles designed for prescription use
must weigh exactly what they are repre-
sented to-that is, they must have exact
ly the right amount Of material in Them
no more, no Lessor else they are OF
NJ, earthly value to the druggist, who is
held to strict accuracy by the physicians
and those who buy of him.
The blower knows all this, aud so
when he thrusts his pipe into the mass
before him he twists it around for a mo-
ment, and brings it out with the exact
amount clinging to the end-for all the
world like a bit of tafy on a stick-puts
the end of the pipe to his lips, and blows
the r%udimentary interior into the bottle.
It is not a bottle yet, however, but a
yielding lump Of red-hot glass, soft and
willing to run in any direction. Right
before che blowers sits a little boy with
two iron molds, each cleft through the
middle, and swinging on hinges asssfne
back. The boy opens his molds and the
forunless bit of glass is dropped into the
opening. Waiting for an instant till the
pliable stuff runs almost to the bottom
the boy closes the mossas3 and the blower
puffs. out his cheeks IL the final blast.
In an instant he has enlarged that in
terror, has forced alls the glass to the
sides Of the mold and mas held it there
for the time required t. set it into
shape. Then he lifts the pipe and the
glass swells above the mold into q globe
of the most exquisite thinness, which
finally explodes with q sharp report and
the bIow-pipe is free.
After a moment the boy opens his
mold, allows the air to strike the bottle,
and then, after another pause, lifts it out
with a pair of tongs and sets it ON a scale
to determine if the weight is correct.
Another little boy comes along with a sort
of a shovel, on which he loads all the
bottles ready for him and takes them te
another workman seated before a fur
mace known by the name Of the ''giory