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.

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!

Well, last night I decided to take the 500# of pressure left on my oxygen tank and just make something fun to play with.  I present to you, my miniature bowling set:

Ready to roll

I was surprised that the pins were difficult to make.   At first I tried making one as a bead.  I figured hey, if nothing else, folks could turn the pins into a necklace.    That seriously wasn’t the way to go.  For one thing there’s no way to flatten the bottom and be sure it’s flat.  For another, beads just aren’t my forte.  I made one and tossed it into the kiln, and I still can’t get it off of the mandrel.

Need to pick up the split

Well, I’m used to working offhand, so I just started whipping up the pins above.  Unfortunately I’m not sure there’s a level spot on my bench.  But, the pins all stand on their own.  This was a nice diversion to make, and my little one took great delight in having a roll at the pins this morning when I brought them in.

If you’re interested, it’s available for sale on my site here.

The good news is that all of the packages I’ve sent out to customers have made it safely with everything intact including the replacement chess set I sent out.

The bad thing is that I still have a slew of pieces to make and get out in time for a Christmas arrival, plus a show this weekend.

Too much to do, no drive to do it AND there’s still the day job.

If I had a press pack, it probably would say I’m a monster anyway.   Truth be told, most of the time I really am a fairly nice person, but you’re welcome to your opinions so long as you take the time to make them informed ones.   But I digress.

I have a problem with other countries.   Mexico, Guatemala, India, China, Indonesia, etc., pretty much anywhere but here in the US.

That’s not to say I’m a racist or xenophobe, I don’t begrudge anyone their existence, and multi-culturalism is something that makes the world strong, but I still have an issue.

The issue is wages in other countries.

Hang in there, I do have a point.

My problem is this…   At shows I do (and other US artisans vend at) we’ve been seeing an increase of imported goods.  This poses a bit of a problem for US based craft workers.   It costs us ___ amount to make a particular item.  Incorporated into that price is the cost of time and materials, a sliver of tool costs, utilities, marketing costs, physical overhead, generic costs of doing business (web sites, accountants, shipping, etc), and an increasingly small margin of profit.   By way of an example, my $10.00 hand blown Christmas ornaments cost me probably close to 8.00 to actually make.  Someone may look at that and see a buck or two in glass, but once you consider the cost of glass (it’s not cheap, trust me), propane and oxygen to make it, a small bit to help recoup tool and utility costs, and a little bit to cover my time and alleged talent, really I should be charging $20.00 by most business theories.  I’m sure my pricing irritates other artists too because it’s low, but I have a habit of charging what I am willing to pay for it.  I try to take the sentimental value out of it, though I really do wish I could pad it in.   This is horrid, but it’s proportionate to the US cost of living.

When we do shows and find imported goods, however, the prices of those imported goods reflect the cost of living elsewhere.   Say you have a country where you could exist on a dollar a day.   I’m not going to try to say that reflects a particularly splendid standard of living, or is even a realistic value.  Maybe given the local cost of food, utilities, housing, etc, it’s more realistic to live on 5 times that to be comfortably housed and fed.

But lets say for the sake of argument that the average daily wage is 2.00 a day in our mythical foreign country.  If someone is making a blown ornament, in not great working conditions mind you, they might then sell that ornament for 50 cents.   In a country where you can live on a dollar a day, 50 cents is certainly an extravagance for something that provides an aesthetic value as opposed to a functional necessity.

Now lets say a foreign business person comes in and tries to do the right thing and buy those ornaments at a helpful premium of a dollar a piece.  The artisan is now making a comparative fortune on those ornaments.    But the helpful foreign business person, who’s going to put 25 cents of every sale back into a fund to help improve conditions for the workers, isn’t going to decorate their tree.  No, they’re importing the comparatively inexpensive ornaments into the US.  These helpful business people will then sing the praises of the good deeds they’re doing to help the comparatively inexpensive workers by paying a premium for the product AND putting money back into those communities.  This is “fair trade”.  Based on the cost of living in those countries, they’re paying a fair price for the item that helps boost the artisan’s average wage and attainable standard of living.

But they’re also selling that ornament for 7.00 in the US market.   This covers their cost of 1.00, some cost of doing business and import fees, but still will likely make them at least 400% profit on that item.

At this point, I hope you can see the issue I have from my US perspective.   The item is already selling for below my asking price or even my cost to produce the item, making my prices look high and drawing away customers.  In doing so, the kindly foreign businessman is also making substantially more profit than I could possibly make on the same type of item.   Eventually what happens is that I can no longer compete against that sort of pricing and as my business dries up, I’m forced to close (or employ cheap labor in another country).

I’m not going to try to say that every foreign made item is in this category.  There are perfectly lovely imported items that are well made and sold for what they’re actually worth, even adjusted for local pricing.   But when a US artisan takes the day out to set up for a show, leaving family and shop to do so, and sets up to find that someone in a booth down the way is selling fairly similar items that were produced for far less and therefore selling for far less, this is a smack in the face to the artisan.

One of the reasons that craft events around the country are having trouble finding craft people to sell at them is because most local artists feel “what’s the point?”.   They’re going to pay for a booth fee, so right off the bat they’re in the red for the day.   Many crafters aren’t producing anything new while they’re trying to sell, so it’s essentially an unpaid day off from work.  Then when they get there, they find low cost imported items directly competing with them destroying any hope of a profitable day.    So why bother?

This, in turn leads to a lowering of the jurying standards at shows and more imported goods creeping in just to fill the booth space, because let’s face it, most craft events are trying to raise money for the organizers, not further the craft artisan’s lives.  There are rare exceptions, but by and large they’re fund raising events, be it for profit or otherwise.    Eventually you have a pop up flea market instead of a showcase of locally made goods.

Like I said, I’m not a monster, I just want to get a fair price for my products.  And I do feel a bit crass calling my one of a kind glass pieces product, but when you boil it down, that’s what it is.   I don’t mind competing on a fair playing field, that’s the nature of competition.  But increasingly, the game is being skewed.

The glass items I make are made mostly from US produced raw materials.   The exception is my clear glass, which comes from Czechoslovakia.   But the colored glass comes from US companies such as Glass Alchemy, Northstar Glass, and Trautman Art Glass, all of which are on the west coast.    This means my cost of materials is going to be based on the US economy, and therefore higher than you might find in a country where you can exist on a dollar a day.

So I ask you, where’s my fair trade?

Nah, not really.  But if you’re reading, thanks.  I appreciate you took time out of your day to peek inside my brain.

So what have I been up to?

My eyeballs in drawer pulls mostly.   I had an order for 28 of the buggers which I finished and delivered.  I have a second, nearly identical order for another 28 of them that I’ve started in on.  I did take a week or so off though.   I don’t mind the repetitiveness of it all, but even I can use a break here and there.   But, with tonight’s session I have 9 done.   I’m trying to bust out the rest this week since the temperature’s are rising, limiting the amount of available shop time.

I’ve also written a tutorial on how to make drawer pulls and knobs.  Given I’ve gotten oodles of practice, I figure I may as well write it all down.   Most folks that know me know if you ask I’ll likely just tell you how to do something if I know how to do it.  But some folks like to have all the steps in one spot and documented, so I put together a document with soup to nuts directions including how to create your own inexpensive wooden shaping mold, and sourcing info for parts.    It’s listed for a very reasonable $20.oo on my Etsy and Artfire sites.

On my ‘week off’, I dabbled a bit in murrini making and whipped up a lovely borosilicate radiation murrini I plan to use in some more glow in the dark beads for Beads of Courage.

Radiation murrini

I think the bead looks nice too.  It’s the only one that I’ve made so far, but I’m trying to squeeze in a few at the end of each session to break up the monotony.

Radiation glow in the dark bead

Unless someone beats me to it, my intention is to put together a freebie tutorial on making the murrini for others to use if they want to do their own, ideally for some BOC beads, hint hint.   It’s on tap for next week.   Before anyone asks, I assume that yes it can be done in soft glass too.  I make that assumption not out of some bold swagger, but rather the method I used to make the cane those are pulled from was inspired by a recent Glass Line tutorial by Akiko Shinoda, who works with satake glass, affectionately known as “water glass” for it’s seeming ability to turn to liquid just by looking at a flame.  If you’d like to go the slacker route and buy some radiation murrini pre-made (boro only…sorry), feel free to make me a reasonable offer.  It’s not something I make and sell on a regular basis, hence the lack of an actual price.

So there you have it, what I’ve been up to, a shameless plug, and a little charity work.  All this in addition to the day job, daddy duty, and occasional bouts of sleep.

Until next time, try not to get burned in whatever you’re doing.

I hate to say it, but most hypothetical questions stem from reality of some sort, and the above happened to me tonight.

Who thinks you grab it with your fingers?

No hands?

Thank goodness.

Normally, if glass falls, and it’s accessible, you calmly crank the oxygen, heat up a rod of glass, jab the fallen piece and get it back into the flame.  The calmly part of that exercise takes practice, but you get there.  I’ve dropped enough marbles that I don’t freak out even when I see the floor’s smoldering.

Tonight however, there was no way to get to the fallen glass, and it needed to be dealt with.

I want to pause for a moment and say that glass artists appear to be a crazy lot.  Stained glass and fused glass artists routinely stick their hands into bins of scrap glass for that perfect piece, all of which is jagged and sharp.  Furnace workers are dipping preheated steel pipes into pots of molten glass that’s held at 2100 degrees then whirling it around like a baton twirler.  Flameworkers have their hands right next to the flames and routinely get jabbed with thin pieces of glass called stringer, deal with glass “splinters”, have glass explode at them, and of course occasionally get burned.  But the thing is, we’re all actually pretty safety conscious.

In most shops, you’ll find at the bare minimum a fire extinguisher.   But this is the method of last resort because that foam’s going to ruin your glass.   Go ahead, ask around, most glass artists will tell you they’ve been wounded but still finished a piece before getting mended.  You don’t want to use the extinguisher unless you have to.

In my shop I also have a spray bottle full of water.   Most of the time I use it for wetting down the bench when cleaning up glass dust and spilled glass powder, but it’s always close at hand.  Guess why?  For situations like tonight.

Rather than getting foam everywhere, I realized there was no way I was getting at that piece of glass and it needed to be dealt with, so I grabbed the bottle and hosed it down.   Don’t get me wrong, you still can’t pick it up with your fingers at that point, but it’s no longer a fire threat.

Glass workers are a crazy lot, but in many cases, it only looks dangerous.   We go to great lengths to minimize the dangers we face, whether that means the ventilation we use, the extinguisher on the wall, the kevlar protective garments, or the protective lenses we use to save our eyes.  But with a little planning, most common disasters can be averted or dealt with quickly and safely so that we an go on to create another day.

As for the glass that got sprayed, for those wondering, it was a loss and is in the scrap bucket.  Luckily it was just a small accent piece for something larger.  More importantly though, everything was still made safe.

Then Monday happened.

Oh sure, it started off well enough.  While I was waiting for programs to open, tests to run and the like, I was taking care of other stuff in the down time.  My cell phone was tethered to the main computer to sync and charge a bit when it rang, it was my business insurance agent.   That’s where the good parts end.   The cable knocked over my coffee onto the work laptop, spilling on the keyboard.

This lead to a day of fighting with the machine, it’s typing random letters, overheating, some keys don’t work, etc.  Even using an external keyboard wasn’t much better since it would randomly decide to take over and start pounding out a thousand ‘n’s, faster than I could erase them.

Something came up late in the day that disrupted plans, and then I didn’t even have to really attend this event, so it was a disruption for nothing.

Tomorrow, after work, I was planning on a torch session.   My customer’s not in a hurry, but I want to get this order done before things get too hot out in the shop, but now I have to go to the office, so that’s out.

It’s always bad timing.