Looking for attraction in northeast Ohio we saw Brian Graham was doing demonstrations at the Canal Fulton Glassworks. We had enjoyed watching a demonstration in Louisville, Kentucky and made a special trip so I could get additional photographs of this process. I had done some laboratory glasswork in high school but nothing at this level.
The process starts by heating the end of a blowpipe and collecting a small dollip of glass from the kiln in the background. Using a cold steel table and various wet wooden tools he then forms it into an initial shape.
Blowing glass is not much like blowing a balloon. Here Brian starts with a very small puff, caps the end of the tube with his thumb and allows the heat of the glass to form a small cavity. At this point ground color can be rolled into the outside, coated with some additional glass, and shaped with additional blowing. The object here is to keep the pipe rotating and the glass at the right temperature to expand with a uniform wall thickness.
The trick here is keeping the glass at the right temperature and continuously rotating so it does not sag. Glass is a very thick liquid which heats and cools very slowly so it is very easy to get one part too hot and fluid making a thin wall or blowout which can then be further formed into a paperweight. Beginning glass blowers make a lot of paperweights before developing a feel and technique which can vary with different batches of glass.
For the final shaping the glass is transferred to another rod with just a very small bit of glass on the end. The trick here is getting it stuck to hold the part for shaping without getting too stuck and a permanent part of the object. Then the open part needs to be heated and formed while the base remains slightly cooler and firm.
As the shaping continues with periodic reheating an important part is the rotation speed causing the lip to expand. Accidentally getting too much glass at the beginning creates a large part that in the final step may not even fit into the oven. Getting too much glass is also very heavy and some of the large parts you see may require several people holding the rod or a stand like Brian is using here.
The final step is breaking off the holding rod and smoothing the attachment point in the base. Then the glass needs to be placed in a cooling kiln where it's temperature is reduced very slowly. If not controlled the outside cools and shrinks while the inside is still hot and the whole piece can explode. The whole process also uses very hot glass and I doubt there any glass workers that do not have al least a few burns and scars to show for their efforts.