I heard about a technique called an "Australian Rollup." I found something at Bullseye about it--you make a fused sheet and roll it up on a collar. The examples they have appear to be left pretty much as a straight-walled cylinder. I wondered if anyone had done this with more extreme forms. Mostly, I wondered if anyone ever managed to gather over it to make a larger form.
I understand you would get some distortion of the pattern, but basically I'm wondering if it's possible to control such a large thin piece when covered with hot glass. I suppose one might try marvering it into a smaller shape first, then blowing it back out.
I assume that a smaller piece (their example is around
8 inches high) would be easier to deal with. The reason the idea came up was wondering if you could fuse cane in a criss-cross pattern before picking it up. Like all good ideas, others apparently had it long ago.I checked Mike Firth's site and believe there is something there about rollups, but there's an indexing problem and it isn't clear just where it is. I always have fun poking around there anyway, so the time wasn't wasted.
Mike Beede