The Winchester news. [volume] (Winchester, Ky.) 1908-19??, 1908-10-23
WORKING WITH GLASS
The Way the Different Color e.
fects Are Produced.
FREAKS OF THE BLoWPIPE.
Quaint Specimen Shapes That Are
Sometimes Dropped From the Puntil.
How Bottles Are Made by the Clever
and Dexterous Workmen.


If stranger enters the glass works
on a dark night he will find not only
beauty In the blowing operations. but
great deal Of hamor. with an uncan-
ny weirdness Ia fame and shadow that
must affect his ina gination to some
extent. The building is circular, with
chimney sticking up through the mid
die of it. from the top of which a pc
culiar intermittent light is fiickering.
In the center of this building. under
meath the chimney, stands a conical
furnace of brick containing perhaps no
fewer than eight holes which are like
fiercely glaring suns and from which
pour expanding broad rays of orange
colored light. If your eyes are strong
enough to look through the holes from
which the orange beams of light
emerge you see several hundredweight
of molten metal shining silvery green
in as many earthen dome shaped melt
ing pots.
The nature of different kinds Of glass
is dependent upon the quality of the
raw material, called batch" put into
the melting pots. Batch" is mixture
of such materials as Calais sand, or
common river sand Astounding in silica,
salt cake. or sodium carbonate and
much lime. Blue colors may be OBJ
tanned by adding oxide of cobalt, green
by means of a chrome. black by man
ganese and amber. The mass of molten
metal got from this Opaque. earthly
looking "batch" has frequently to be
skinned of impurities. but it is never
theless a problem whence comes that
wonderful and enduring transparency
which everybody likes to see in glass.
Until the hour strikes for the work
M N to commence operations you may
find them experimenting for amuse-
me- Mt or profit with the blowpipe. You
viii see many an enormity produced in
glass the like of which can scarcely
ever have been dropped from a puntil
before. Specimens are blown out to
ttr- shinness Of a tissue paper bag.
wh'-'l another puff of wind explodes
with crack, or glowing glass pear
puntil so that it may vanish with re-
port on the floor, its hue and heat be-
ing extinguished Immediately. The floor
all around the furnace chamber Is COW
cred with brittle shining splinters and
particles of glass, which crackle under
foot at every step. One of the men
may bring you a mass Of metal on a
blowpipe and ask you to expend a few
cheekfuls of wind upon 1t. The pipe
takes no more blowing than d from
bone, though 1t lacks a mouthpiece.
and you may expand the bubble until
1t is black and cold, so fragile that 1t
will break into a myriad pieces If
you touch it. The molten glass is so
ductile that it may be spun out into a
thread, and the men often vie with
each other to see who can make the
longest and thinnest strand.
At the signal to commence work the
men, already partly stripped to the
waist. poke their four foot blowpipe
through the hole of the crucible oppo-
site to which they work. twisting II
round until it has taken up sufficient Of
the ropy and viscid glass for one bot
tie. The man who is clever at his work
will, of course, gather up neither too
much nor too little for the thickness of
the bottle required. He can tell with
out looking through the furnace holes
when he has enough by the weight
added to his pipe. Thus all around the
fiery furnace there are figures moving
continually across the lurid light. most
of them dexterously welding their
blowpipes and balancing at the end Of
each one the exact quantity of vitrified
matter to make bottle. The amateur
would find 1t difficult to balance the
molten mass. The chances are that it
would drop on the floor, never to be
picked up again.
At the same moment you will see bot
ties In all stages OF growth-some gift
tering gold, others cooling down to
plummets or dazzling pears. others as
incandescent bosses threatening to be-
come fragile bladders. II is all as
charming as pyrotechnic display. You
will see the black blowpipe twirled
round, blown down. held up like gun
barrel, then in the form Of an mean
descent lamp globe turned round on
beeswaxed east iron implement called
a mnrler. on whose edge the bottle
neck is formed. 1t Is held UP once
more, blown into, then shut up in
cast iron mold placed at the operators
feet somewhat below the level Of the
ground. This mold is opened and closed
by wire spring. which the opera
tor presses with his feet, and directly
the red hot bottle is inclosed he blows
down the pipe once more so as to all Il
completely.
A man goes round from mold to mold
inserting a rod into the neck Of each
bottle and collecting trayful to go to
the annealing chamber. Here the bot
ties are stacked up for gradual cool
ing process. which may possibly last
thirty-six hours. This gives them the
desired strength. The annealing proc
ess is cure for their natural fragility
and enables them to stand the test of