Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Blenko Glass Trip

The Glass Making process behind the scenes is much more entailed than it seems.  We were able to go behind the scenes to see the glass making process first hand.

We didn't get to see the actual process of blending the chemicals to create the glass because it needs to be prepared in advance and then placed in an oven to "melt" together in the glass making process.

What are the normal temperatures for an oven containing the molten glass?

We were assigned to make two different items.  A candy dish and a water bottle.  I'm going to start with the process of making the candy dish.

The first step of the process was to choose a color thet we wanted to make for our candy dish.  they had a samole on hand to give us an idea of how the color would blend with the glass.  Then, we had to get et a glob of glass on the end of the glassblower's pole.  We were using crystal as our "base" for the candy dish.

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The glob of glass was then placed in a smaller oven to help maintain the consistency of the molten glass.  It was then "rolled" in the color granules that each individual chose and placed back in the small oven to melt them.  The glass was then "rolled" in the color granules again (some chose different colors for the second time and some chose the same - I chose the same color - red) and placed in the small oven a second time.

Meanwhile, if you were a visitor to Blenko, you would only see the "other" glass blower at the observation deck and would not have seen this "behind the scenes" process.

Once the second layer was melted, there would be a second layer of crystal placed on the "glob" at the end of the pole.

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That was then taken to the glassblower on the observation deck where visitors to Blenko could watch the final process of mankind the candy dish.  That is shown in the video below.


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