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Critical Point
Getting ready to take the almost completed vase off the blow pipe, Eric noted that this is the point where one in five or six pieces ends up on the floor. With Nina left at the bench to spin, he heated a second small piece of glass on another pipe and cooled it enough so it would stick but not make a bond with the bottom of the vase. The vase was broken loose at its neck from the blow rod and sticking just barely to the second pipe, went back in the furnace for flash heating and then smoothing.
At this stage, the vase with its vivid blue designs looked finished. Eric explained, however, that stress points would cause the glass to shatter if it wasn’t treated further in an annealing oven.
"As it cools, it gets brittle," Nina added, "it’s the molecules. We have about 20 minutes to work in after it comes out from the furnace. Much longer and it’s going to end up on the floor instead of inthe annealer.”
Eric pointed to what looked like a relic of an ice box back against the wall. “That’s my mom’s old refrigerator. I lugged it out in a field and burned it until it got down to the metal shell,” Eric said. He took that shell, lined it with bricks, added electrical elements and shelves and presto! He had an annealing oven.
When the partners are blowing glass the annealer is
Photos
Daphne
y
i Hutchinson
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