As you might know I bought some of the Devardi borosilicate to try out independently, partly to see if I like it, partly to share an unbiased review.

The testing continued, albeit with the same colors, but I wanted to see how this glass played along with Simax clear borosilicate.  It’s one of the more common brands of clear used, and it happens to be what mostly use.

For a small test, I made simple encased beads.  These are quick and easy and generally sufficient to demonstrate incompatibility.   I’m pleased to say I only had one crack, and I’m pretty sure it’s a thermal crack, that is the glasses played together nicely, the bead just had cooling and heating issues.

First up, the turquoise glass.  I have to say that aside from the cracking and chunking while it’s being applied, this is pretty nice to work with.   It holds it’s color very well where another turquoise I’ve tried reduced to red.   As you can see, it held up nicely under the clear.

It's a little out of focus, sorry

Next up was the orange.  I was a bit worried about this one because it tends to bubble easily while working.   However it encased nicely.  The one that cracked is all the way to the left.   Oddly, the bead didn’t come apart when I took it off the mandrel.

Orange under clear

These are the cobalt blue, no clear over top.  I was wondering if the devit problem would hang around and lo and behold, it did not.

Not the most transparent of transparent glasses

Just for poo and laughs, I decided to try out the stick of red I bought.  I have to say, I was impressed.   I’m very good at causing reds to liver and this one held up well.  From left to right, the beads are:  pure red, red with clear over top, red over white.

Not bad, not bad. Kind of a tomato red

I played with some combos too.   Recall I said that when thinned the black appears to be a saturated blue?  Well when thick it looks more greenish.   On the left is black with some brown dots.   On the left is a white bead with a cobalt blue wrap.   You can still see the lines in the white.

Black? Try olive green. That blue's nice over white though.

I wanted to see how the glass does deep encased as well, plus I figured I’d go all out on the turquoise to see what it’ll do under a lot of heat.   One note, I realized this morning I used Schott Artistic for the clear in this marble rather than Simax.   Generally you only see a difference between the two when it comes to fuming, so the differences here should be minimal.

All in all, I’m glad to say that the glass moved nicely under the clear.  I was a little apprehensive about the orange since it was bubbling some while I was working the clear down, but it seems to be ok.   There’s obviously more bubbles in there than I wanted, but it’s possible I just didn’t work the initial chill marks out up front.

Not pictured, the punty scar I missed @#$%

All of the color on this marble is the Devardi glass.    I used the orange, white, cobalt, and then the turquoise on the outside.   I may do a test marble to see if the turquoise and lily pad can encase, but I’m not optimistic it’ll live.

Good color retention

Here’s the outside.   I’m not that sure about the pitting; I either left bubbles or some schtuff came out of the torch.   I know I saw something ricochet off the surface at one point.   I heated the snot out of this turquoise glass though and it held the color, so they get some points there.

So far, other than the white being a fugly mess, and the turquoise breaking up while I was applying it, I’m not feeling like I wasted my money here.     Frankly if I mixed and drew down the turquoise rod some, I think it would work better.

There may be one more post about this at some point, but for now, I hope you found this helpful.  I’d say if you’re interested, pick some up, but do a few experiments before you go full out into a project.   I haven’t tested cross company compatibility so your mileage may vary.   Play safe!

So let’s get into it.  There’s a company importing Indian glass now, called Devardi Glass.  They started with soft glass in the 104 range, and I haven’t tried it.   There’s mixed reviews, folks who love it, folks who hate it.  Frankly if you work soft glass you probably know someone on both sides, so find a hater and buy their stash if you’re interested.  There’s precious little middle ground.

More important to me, they’re importing borosilicate, COE 33 glass too.    The price is certainly right, but I’m also mindful of the “you get what you pay for” adage.   Still, I got a good deal on some Colormax color a while back, and while there was a fair amount of junk, the Colormax white is my absolute all time favorite white glass.   Work boro for a while, and you’ll find that’s one thing everyone has a personal favorite on.

I’d like to point out at this point, I don’t know the owners of the company, so far as I know they aren’t on my Facebook list, I didn’t receive anything for free, this is simply me reviewing glass I paid money for.

The glass is inexpensive, I had the extra money on hand for a change, and I like to experiment.  I’ve worked a variety of stuff including bottle and window glass, so I like new things.  Here’s what I ordered:

Quarter pound

• Transparent cobalt
• Lily pad
• opaque turquoise
• opaque medium brown
• opaque orange
• opaque black

Rod

• opaque red
• opaque lemon yellow
• opaque light pink
• opaque mango

Full pound

• opaque white

Quite the mix, I know, you’re jealous.   Mostly it was a mix of what I thought was interesting.  In the case of the orange, lily pad, and turquoise, I’m curious how it works.  Cobalt and black can be tricky in their own right, and the white…well I was hopeful it was my new stash.  We’ll get back to that.

Quarantined to the cookie sheet for now so it doesn't get mixed in with my other glass

I wound up getting my glass a day ahead of when I was expecting, which is always nice, and it arrived intact.   Zero breakage is tough to do, so I was happy.

The first thing I noticed about the glass was the striations in the rods.  Lines aren’t that odd, but striations?  That’s different.  If you look down the center of a rod of this glass, you can see veins of clear.   Normally from a pot of glass you should see some fairly homogeneous appearance.  Occasionally you get a line of clear through a rod, but this isn’t the norm.  It’s almost as if rods of clear and color were bundled together, heated and pulled down instead of being drawn from a molten pot of glass.   This cropped up later, most notably in the white glass where it cleaved along some of the clear lines while applying in the flame.  This is a less than desirable feature.

These are some drops pulled off the rods once I had cleaned up the ends.

It's not supposed to look like a colorful sperm parade, honest!

This is a side view:

Left to right: Lily pad, white, turquoise, orange, black, brown, cobalt

Here’s the breakdown of what I’ve found so far.   There’s another batch of tests in the kiln via spacer beads so I’ll report more tomorrow or so.

Overall: The rods were a bit grimy and I cleaned what I tested with some glass cleaner and a paper towel.   Given the rods are hand pulled, they are of varying thickness.  While I was careful introducing the thicker rods into the flame, the turquoise fairly consistently had some popping and cracking as it was heated.   Extra caution helped with this, but it wasn’t a total solution.   For this test I kept it either to a single color, or mixed with another Devardi color.

Opaque white:  Yellows easily, and even with mixing, the clear doesn’t mix in well leaving lines in the finished product.   Drill mixing might help this, but that seems excessive.  Truth be told, the jury’s still out on this one.   Have a look at the following picture.  You’ll notice the white’s pretty white in the blue/white marble.  In the green one it stayed yellowish.   I noticed this yellowing on samples I pulled off the rod too, so it wasn’t a spillover effect from the green.

If you look at the green/white marble, you'll see the clear lines I mentioned

Cobalt: This was another odd color.  It’s a transparent, but usually cobalts are fairly simple to work.  Sometimes you get some reduction, but turn up the oxygen and it’s usually dealt with.   With this, it devitrified as it was being applied.  The small samples I pulled showed discoloration, and at first I thought it was reduction, but as I later applied more, I saw the tell tail appearance of the desaturated, washed out, matte finish.  Here’s where it gets weird.   I pulled a stringer of white and applied the cobalt over that.   I saw plenty of messy, devitrification.    I attached a small bit of white to the end of that, melted it into a marble and it smoothed out.  On the other side of the kiln cycle, you see the marble above. Clear, vibrant color.   Very odd.

Black: Overall this worked very nicely.    When thin you can tell it’s a heavily saturated blue base.   When thicker it’s pretty well opaque.   I didn’t notice any reduction problems, but the first set of tests were pretty limited.

Turquoise: Of the handful of colors I tested up front, this was the only one that I had a popping/shattering problem with.  I have worked with some turquoises before, so I wasn’t too surprised, nor was I surprised when I saw a little bubbling/boiling.   I was happy to see that it held it’s color pretty well, very WYSIWYG overall and working cooler helped with the bubbling.  Careful entry into the flame helped with the popping issue to some extent, though later on I did have some problems with the rod “chunking” while I was messing about; that is the rod would sometimes break half an inch or so up the rod while working.  One problem I’ve had problems with turquoise is reduction; the glass loses some of it’s color and goes to a rust/red color.    I’m happy to report this held its color very well.

Orange: This color was a nice surprise.   I’m horrible with cadmium colors, it’s a lack of experience, so I tend to avoid them.  Oranges tend to boil easily too, so this was going to be a challenge color.    However, a cooler flame and gentle introduction helped keep the color from boiling other the occasional bubble coming to the surface.   The color holds very well, it was not bad to work with.

Lilly pad green: This was a fun color to work with.  Again, it had to be worked cooler to avoid boiling, but once that was sorted, it was pretty usable.   I was concerned about the green reducing down to a red color, particularly because when it’s hot it goes brown.    But once cooled it stayed a vibrant green.

Third from the right shows the bubbling

Opaque light brown: I only played with this color long enough to pull a sample off, but it was heat tolerant, and stayed a lovely dark coffee/caramel color.

So what was my overall opinion?   So far, not bad.  That cobalt’s a bit of an enigma, so I’ll need more testing, and the white’s not making any friends around here.    But the other colors were surprisingly good.   I was particularly impressed by how well the brighter rods held their color.

In the second round of testing I made more spacer beads, but I tried mixing a couple of the colors as well as introducing some Simax clear.    Tune in next time for those results.

Have fun, and keep your fingers out of the flame.

Want to skip that mess?  Want something that can bring joy all year AND help out 26 artists?

The 2012 AGLF calendar

Give some consideration to the Artisan Glassworker Legal Fund calendar.   It’s 12 months of beautiful artwork and a useful calendar to boot.   All of the proceeds go straight to the legal fund currently being used to defend 26 artists (including yours truly) who are trying to protect free speech.

To order a calendar, visit the site directly at:  http://aglf.info/calendar.html . For information about the group in general, back on up to http://aglf.info.

And thank you!

Ok, so what have I been working on.    Not much of anything really.  I’ve been a bit busy the past few months with the day gig, so it’s sucked a lot of my glass time away.    I’d certainly say that’s sad, particularly since the holiday season tends to be when I do much of my sales.   But, it is what it is, and let’s face it, the economy’s still a bit of a question mark anyway.

But we’re not reading this for economics right?    What have I been working on?    I like to make snow globes.   But I hate all of the gluing to get the plug attached and to be honest, making the wooden bases with the equipment I have on hand takes longer than making the glass globe.

So I’ve been trying to sort out a design that eschews the wooden base and the epoxy in favor of an all glass design.     Sounds ambitious, doesn’t it?   It is, particularly with my hollow skills.

Around my house we have a saying, a saying that’s second only to the family motto, “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”    That saying?   “Good idea, bad implementation.”

With that, I present…a monstrosity:

Isn't it horrific?

The idea’s good, and quite sound.   The problems with this one?   The base is far too large, and the seal, other than being lumpy and ugly, isn’t 100%.   More like 87%.    Some changes I need to make:

• A smaller, more proportional base
• A cleaner edge
• A greater thickness at the top of the base to better take the welding process.
• Something more creative inside (In my defense, I sort of knew this first try wasn’t going to be “it”)

Given my hollow skills are often up one day and outright missing on others, this was no small feat for me. Not to mention, I don’t know anything about wiring up to a USB cord.

But, as I’m fond of saying, just because I don’t know how isn’t cause to stop me.   For my stubbornness, I was finally rewarded.

I’d like to say now, this is the first one I’ve made.   There’s no on/off switch, it’s more delicately balanced than I intended, and I’m not super thrilled with the connection from the neck to the foot of the lamp, but in my defense, I had to redo that [CENSORED] connection 3 times, each time requiring another trip through the kiln to anneal.

With that, I give you…the lamp.

It makes me think of Audrey II from "Little Shop of Horrors"

It’s a pretty little thing, if not horribly lit in this picture.   But let’s face it, the lighting in my shop isn’t the star here.   This stands about 7.5″ tall by 7.5″ long.

I was going for a floral look

I was going for a floral look with this piece, and I think I achieved it.  I couldn’t tell you what flower it might be vaguely reminiscent of, but I assure you, no plants will be called onto the Maury Povich show for DNA testing.

The accursed foot

This is the foot that kept popping off.  I had it pop off from both sides and in between.  Finally I made sure there was a good fluid attachment point on the neck, and I wound up creating a larger attachment to the foot itself.   This gave me enough room to maneuver a small flame in between the two.

And finally….

It works!

The small white light I used gives enough light to find your keys if you really needed to, but it really makes a lovely night light more than anything.   I love the variations in the globe from where the colored glass was more opaque in some spots.    I did notice an odd flicker when I had it plugged in, but I suspect this is because my laptop was running on battery at the time and I was seeing fluctuations in the power stream out.   It makes me fear for my peripherals.

But, I finally got it done.  Now on to the next one.

I’m a bit ADD sometimes, and every year it seems I find something new and different to try.   This very well might be this year’s item of interest.

For those of you I let in on my secret project, thank you for the kind words of encouragement, they were much appreciated in my…darkest hours.  Get it?  Ha!

UPDATE: I may have to revisit the use of resistors; my light’s dimmed.    I’m annoyed though because  I should be getting 5v downstream, and the light I pulled my light out of uses 3 1.5v button cells.     This is how we learn I suppose.

UPDATE part 2:  I blew the other LED, but after a few hours fiddling about with some magic ceramics, it seems I’ve replaced it and it’s holding it’s brightness.   Woohoo!

The other day he said something to me that all glass addicts like to hear from their offspring, “Daddy, I’d like to try to make some beads.”

I’m all veclempt.

I’ve let him try his hand at the torch before, and the last time he managed to get a small burn on his shoulder.  So I’m proud of him for wanting to try it again.   I don’t push him about it, it’s my thing, not his.    But if he wants to try it, he’s mature enough to give it a go.

The coolest part….we showed him one of the Beads of Courage videos and once he’s made some “cow colored beads, with polka dots for him and [his brother]“, he wants to make some beads to send off to BOC.

He’s a pain in my butt some days, but the kid’s got a good heart.   We must be doing something right.

Incidentally, if you’ve never heard of Beads of Courage, give them a look.  If you can contribute to their cause, please do!

This is by far one of THE most well run shows I do all year.   The crew that puts it together does a great job from organization to advertising to the actual day of operations, right down to helping coordinate the load out in an orderly manner.   With nearly 200 vendors and street closures involved, this is no small task.

My wife helped me out immensely today, getting up early with me and driving all of us over to drop me and my stuff off, then hanging out for a bit to set up.

Once I got everything set up, I realized I have less on hand than I thought, but it was still a healthy mix of old inventory and new stuff, including a lovely ladybug plate I made a while back, and my new back scratchers.    Tent went up, glass was put out and then…..well, not much of anything.

To start with, it was downright chilly today.  Sixties all day and overcast, so not quite gloomy, but not sunshine either.    I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt, but luckily had the good sense to bring a jacket.   I really should have brought a hat too, particularly since ultimately I ended up with a sunburn.

Despite the weather, however, the event was well attended.    I’m horrible at estimating people counts, but I’d say well over a thousand people filtered through, very likely more.

But, of all those people, I had one sale.   One.   For a whopping $4 and the state gets 6.25% of that.   The upside is that the booth fee was only $40, but still, not good.

I don’t know about the entire show’s results, and according to my neighbor at the end of the day she had a good day, but it appeared that there were far more people not carrying purchases than those that were, it didn’t look like a banner day for most.    The attendees for these show tend to be fairly ecologically minded, so it’s possible a lot of purchases were pocketed, pursed, etc, but really, it didn’t seem to be going well.   In fact, from what I was told, one of the vendors a couple stalls down was actually in tears over the poor sales.

The one seller I know had a good day was the kettle corn guy.    I can’t say I blame anyone there, it smelled heavenly.

The highlight of my day, cold, tired, a little sore, was that I happen to carry chemical warmer packs in my travel boxes and was able to stash one in each pocket to help take off the chill.

Most of the customers were perfectly lovely.   Polite, having a look, oohing and ahhing, picking things up, occasionally asking questions.    And in case you’re wondering, my prices really aren’t too horrible.   My pendants I had listed for $30, and those were strung on a nice, though low cost, chain and clasp.  My hair sticks I put out for $20 a piece, and they had a pretty decent amount of fondling, so the price may not have been a key deterrent.    Even my marbles…I had then ranging from $5-$80, so something for everybody.

But there was one customer attendee that really got on my nerves.   She pointed out that if I sold my pendants for $10 each I’d likely sell much more of them and seemed quite delighted to give this free economics lesson.  By way of example she pointed to the cheap piece of jewelry she had on her wrist (colored aluminum perhaps) and pointed out that she can buy those for $2 and sell it for $10 making a tidy profit.   Even after explaining that one of my pendants took about an hour to make, she still seemed to think that I should sell my pendants for only 10 dollars each.   I was as polite as I could be, though given I was about 3.5 hours into the 5 hour show and a little defeated already, I was less than pleased to have this discussion with her.   So while I nodded politely, what I should have said was that if I wanted to sell soulless mass imported crap I’d open a big box craft store, but I held my tongue.   I’m tempted to print up cards with a QR code leading to my post on costs to hand out to folks suggesting discount store pricing.

Given the way the day went, I’m not sure I even want to do any more shows this year.    I’ve pre-paid for the fall edition of the Start event, however, and there’s at least one other that is also a music festival, so at least I get entertainment for the day.  But given my bang up sales, you have to wonder if it’s really worth it to load the car, inconvenience my wife by sticking her with the kids solo for the day AND returning to give me a lunch/bio break, spending the day away from my family for a loss on the day, and then doing the break down.   They say you can’t make any money if you don’t take the risk, but really, with the down economy and competition from imports, I’m starting to feel that an up tick isn’t anywhere on the horizon yet.

So that was my day.   Precious little upside at all today, though I did run into the owner of a store I have glass in on consignment.   I need to make up some stuff to bring out to her to swap out sooner than later.    This really is an upside since she was concerned about her own shop’s sales in general last time I was out.   The fact she’s still in business is a glimmer of hope.

There’s art, food, music, and usually at least something interesting going on that kids will love.

For more information, have a look at the official stArt on the Street website, and I hope to see you there.

Sure, that’s the outside bit that we convey to people, that we work with the primitive forces of nature to bring you a pretty or useful something or another, but have you ever looked behind the curtain?  Occasionally I share some of the behind the scenes bits of the craft with you, hoping it doesn’t ruin the magic, but I find it’s good to help the customer’s understanding of what goes on, as well as provide some information for folks just starting out.

So today we’re going to talk a little about supply prices, in particular, gas.

Not the stuff we put in our car, though wooooo-boy, it’s expensive, but rather the stuff that runs the torch.   In my case, my torch runs on propane and oxygen.   The propane is pricey, but I find it lasts me a lot longer than the oxygen.   It runs at a far lower pressure so the tank goes much further.

But oxygen…who would have thought air would be so expensive?   That’s part of the problem though, it’s not “air” as we think about it.   That contains oxygen, but also nitrogen, various particulates, etc., etc.   This is just the oxygen, and it’s about 98% pure.   In my case I bring it into my shop in 5 foot fall canisters called K tanks.

Over the years I’ve stuck with the same supplier and my price has crept up quite a bit.   I started around $22.00 per fill (plus tax and fees) and most recently was paying $45.00 a tank, plus tax and fees, bringing it to around $51.00.   Mind you, I’m a cash and carry customer, not on a contract, but I’ve also been with the same supplier for about 4 years now, don’t mess up their equipment, and usually haul the tanks myself.    So I was a bit dismayed to hear what other folks in the industry were paying for for their oxygen, and I found another supplier.   The other supplier offered me $15 per tank.

$15.

This was without negotiation, no contract, I didn’t have to harangue them or talk them down, that’s what they offered me.   Hells yeah!

Normally, since I’m a part time glass blower, I go through about 2 tanks a month during the non-holiday season, but because of a variety of other things going on in my life, I haven’t been in the shop as much as I’d like to be, so for over a month I had 4 tanks (my old ones I was still burning through and the two from the new supplier) in my shop.   Finally, this week, I finished off my old suppliers tanks and took them over to terminate my lease on them.

I’m going to pause for a moment and say that, while I won’t name the company here, the crew at my old supplier is awesome, a nice bunch of people in general; helpful and knowledgeable to boot.    So my closing of this contract wasn’t a personal decision, it was simply financial.  In all honesty, my new supplier’s FAR less convenient, particularly since they don’t have Saturday hours.

I’m happy to say that my old supplier offered me a better price.  Not as low as the new supplier’s price (the old guys are regional, I don’t fault them on not being able to match), but far better than my old $45 price.    I still said no.

I have the bottles from the new supplier already, and there was one thing that irked me.    Though my old supplier apologized (which I do deeply appreciate in this day and age), the problem is that someone really should have caught this earlier.  Like I said, I try to be a good customer, but my price crept up so high that my friends were insulted for me.    I have to wonder if everyone is paying that higher price from this vendor or if it was some intentional…I hesitate to say sleight since that’s not really the right word, but if it was an intentional attempt to just gouge a little guy.  I wonder that because as a cash and carry customer, it’s not like there was an automatic delivery and billing in effect, each time a human being had to see that price on the screen and charge me that amount knowing full well what other customers pay.    Again, to his credit, the employee I talked to when I turned in the bottles apologized and said that this should have been caught before it got to this point.    He even offered to cover my tank lease for the next 2 years.

Who knows?  If the new supplier doesn’t work out because of the timing issue, I basically have to run tanks on a lunch break, I may go back, and I most certainly left that door open when I dropped off the empties for the last time, but for now, I have a new oxygen supplier.   Business decisions aren’t always fun.

**************

Hey, just a quick comment.  Someone asked me the other day, “Hey Tom!  Why do you moderate the comments on here?”    Well, the answer is simple, spammers.   I think I’ve only ever swatted down one comment that wasn’t an out and out spammer, and that one was essentially just directing someone to another site as well.   But, it’s never for a disagreeing opinion (unless you were to be out and out rude or obscene), but just to keep the spammers at bay.    So sign up, feel free to leave a comment and rest assured that you won’t be dashed merely on opinion.

About to lose my marbles

Knock knock

….

Not one for jokes, hmm?   Ok, well all business, I can get behind that.

Can I perhaps…tempt you with a little value?

Today is the Artisan & Glassworkers Legal Fund Random Bag of Glass fundraiser.  Of course we have a special on acronyms like AGLF and RBOG, but you want the good stuff.

The bags.

For $10, you can get a mystery grab bag containing some bit of glassy goodness.   Select the designer bag if you don’t work with glass, select a supply bag if you do.

Interested?  Starting at 12 PM EST on April 1, 2011, you can get your hands on one of these fun items.   Just click over to the AGLF special events page.

Can’t wait?  Have a look at the Etsy site for a great deal on a handmade somethin’ somethin’.