Fort Pierce news. (Fort Pierce, Fla.) 190?-1920, 1908-11-20
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 a stranger enters the glass works
on dark night he will find not only
beauty in the blowing operations, but
a great deal of humor, with an uncan-
ny werdness in flame and shadow that
must affect ,his imagination to some
extent. The building is circular, with
q chimney sticking up through the mid
die of 1t, from the top of which a Pc
culiar intermittent light is pickering.
In the center of this buildingAunder-
meath the chimney, stands a conical
furnace of brick containing perhaps no
fewer than eight holes which are like
flercely glazing 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 hundrodWelght
Of molten metal shining silycry 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 a mixture
Of such materials as Calais sand, or
common river sand Astounding i'm silica,
salt cake, or sodium carbonate and
much lime. Blue colors may be oh.
tanned by adding oxide Of cobalt, green
by means Of a chrome, black by man.
gauese 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
men to commence operations you may
find them experimenting for amuse-
ment or profit with the blowpipe. You
will 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
the thinness Of tissue paper bag,
which another pun Of wind explodes
with a crack, or a glowing glass pear
Is for very wantonness knocked on the
puntil so that 1t 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 mass of metal on
blowpipe and ask you to expend a few
cheekfuls Of wind upon it. The pipe
takes no more blowing than from.
bone, though 1t lacks q mouthpiece,
and you may expand the bubble until
it is black and cold, so fragile that 1t
will break into 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 1t
round until it has taken up sufficient of
the ropy and viscd glass for one bot
tie. The man who Is clever at his work
WILL Of course, gather up neither too
10 fha tbinlyFaco nf
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 yitrlfied
matter to make n bottle. The amateur
would find it difficult to balance the
molten mass. The chances are that It
would drop on the floor, never to be
picked ZIP again.
At the same moment you viii see bot
ties in all stages Of growth-some gilt
tering gold. others cooling down TO
orange or red. some in the forms Of
plummets or dazzling pears, others as
ineandescent bosses threatening TO be
come fragile bladders. 1t Is all as
charming as a pyrotechnic display You
will see the black blowpipe twlrled
round, blown down, held UP like gun
barrel. then in the form Of an mean
descent lamp globe turned round on a
beeswaxed cast iron implement called
marler, on whose edge the bottle
neck Is formed. 1t is held up once
more, blown into. then shut up In a
cast iron mold placed at the operators
feet somewhat below the Level Of the