Coeur d'Alene evening press. (Coeur d'Alene, Idaho) 1907-1929, 1908-09-23
WITH GLASS
The Way the Different Color e.
fects Are Produced.
FREAKS or THE BLoWPIPE.

Quaint Specimen Shapes That Are
Sometimes Dropped From the PuntiI.
How Bottles Are Made by the Clever
and Dexterous Workmen.
II stranger enters the glass works
on a dark night he will find not only
beauty in the blowing operations. but
a great deal Of humor. with an uncan-
ny weirdness in fame and shadow that
must affect his imagination to some
extent The building Is circular. with
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 building. under
meath the chimney. stands a conical
furnace Of brick containing perhaps no
fewer than eight holes which are like
iercely 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 siIvery 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 q mixture
of such materials as Calais sand, or
common river sand Astounding in silica,
Lyn \
much lime. Blue colors may be OBJ
talned by adding oxide of cobalt, green
by means OF 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 1t is never
theless 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 blowplpe. 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 a tissue paper bag.
which another pun Of wind explodes
with a crack, or a glowing glass pear
Is for very wantonness knocked or the
puntil so that II 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 1t. The pipe
takes no more blowing than a from
bone, though 1t lacks a mouthplece
and you may expand the bubble until
II Is black and cold, so fragile that 1t
will break into a myriad pieces If
you touch 1t. The molten glass Is so
ductile that 1t may be spun out into
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 cruclble oppo-
site to which they work. twisting it
round until 1t has taken up sufficient of
the ropy and viscld glass for one bot
tie. The man who Is clever at his work
viii. 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
blowplpes and balancing at the end of
each one the exact quantity of vitritied