The Coca-Cola gambit- a new technique, or wishful finishing?

"Prometheus" wrote: For me, the vase is all about the outside- I could care less if the interior was covered with plastic, paint, or even that spray-in truck bed liner, (clip) ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ I think it is very unlikely that you could even enough heat to draw a plastic bottle into a small hole, and then expand it with a vacuum. It's going to cool unevenly, and develop thin spots--probably quit moving before it is fully formed.

But, I think you could do a very presentable job by mixing a batch of liquid resin, like the stuff used for fibreglassing. Pour it into the vessel, and keep it turning it until the entire surface is coated. As you say, the vase could be run slowly in the lathe help in the distribution/spread, and to keep it from settling until the cure begins. It might be good to do in in two or more pours, to help you get an even coating. If you pour in more than you need, this will aid in getting a complete coating. Then pour out the excess, and to keep from wasting it, put it in your freezer until later, and then do a second pour to build up the thickness.

While you are working on this, keep a bottle of Coca Cola nearby, for "the pause that refreshes." ;-)

snip

I like it! I don't think the vacuum method would work. But if you could fasten a test-tube shaped plastic blank on the end of a controllable air hose, heat it then blow it up inside the vase it sounds feasible. Test it in a milk bottle (lots of luck in finding one).

What Leo said done like so> First plug the opening to the center point and after pouring, plug the entire opening while you turn to coat. Pouring to the center point ensures complete coverage on the wall.

Hi Jesse, Good thinking outside the vase.

In addition to blow moulding a plastic lining inside your vase, you could alternately consider using the vase as a mould for blown glass art. It probably pays better. Of course you would have to change your attitude and start caring more for the interior. Forget the outsides and take pains to turn artistic insides. This suggestion is meant to expand on your idea, not to divert it with ill chosen humor.

Turn to Safety, Arch Fortiter

I've been interested in turning for years but haven't done any, but glass blowing I know about. If you want to blow into a mold, you either have to be able to pull straight out (so there needs to be a slight taper--or you have to suck a little air out before removing the glass) or you have to make the mold with hinges. Also, a wooden mold will burn out pretty fast. One of the advantages of them is that each piece is different and eventually you can get some visible grain impressed in the glass, but I think you'd lose much of the elegant detail you would probably put into a jazzy vase.

If you decide to try this, fruit woods are usually used for glass working because they don't leave marks. Most of the tools I've used are cherry, but all the references I've seen say "fruit wood"--I assume cherry is just readily available.

Just in case it isn't clear, what you *can't* do is blow glass inside a wooden mold and leave it there to cool--the wood will burn up and the glass will crack because it isn't annealed. The glass will probably be at 1500 degrees F when it's blown.

A problem I envision with the original idea about plastic liners is that the air would be trapped between the liner and the wooden vase, especially if the neck is smaller than the body. I doubt you'd want to drill holes in it to prevent this. The idea about epoxy resin sounds more workable. However, I'd make sure I had resin that was waterproof--I tried waterproofing an unglazed ceramic vessel and got the wrong kind. It was a real mess to get off the inside.

I was wondering if there is some kind of waterproofing agent that can soak into wood? If so, maybe you could just fill the vase up with it, cover it for a day or so, then decant the remainder back into the container. A final stupid idea: what about that wrench handle dip? It's nice and thick so it should be easy to sloosh around inside a piece, and it doesn't have to be strong to hold water--the vase would supply all the support.

Anyway, good luck.

Mike Beede

That's a great idea, too- any you're probably right about the plastic, though I'll give a go anyhow and see what happens. Generally speaking, my vases have a wide enough mouth to get a heat gun or a plumber's torch right in there, (got to have room for stems, after all!) so it might work okay.

It's not an impossible senario, I *do* have a propane forge out in the shed. What I don't have is any idea of how glass blowing works (In fact, I'm happy if I can just get flat glass to cut reliably when I need to replace a window or am making a display case.)

I'll look into it a little, and see where that goes- generally speaking, a lot of the work I've seen from glass sculptors doesn't float my boat, but then again, that may be why they're stuck in a kiosk in a mall...

And, it could be pretty neat if I was able to make wine glasses that I could epoxy onto wooden stems...

As far as how it pays, I've given up hope of ever making any real money in my area long ago. I could make the best stuff in the world, but no one else has the $$$ to pay for it anyway- that's what happens when you live in a small town surrounded on all sides by farms. But as a silver lining for that particular cloud, that means I'm free to do whatever I feel like, and not worry about what the market will or will not accept.

Well, that sure is handy! :)

So, how does glass blowing work? I actually might have all the stuff needed already, and give it a try this weekend if it sounds do-able. Basically, I've got a propane-fueled forced air forge lined with Kaowool for blacksmithing, a nice(ish) glass cutter, plenty of old glass from various things (or, I can aquire playground sand, if that is what I need) and a bit of apple wood that I can turn to whatever shape is needed on the lathe.

The forge has a firebrick floor, and I do have some stainless steel that I could use to cover that as well, if needed, and is capable (at a guess- I don't have a pyrometer) of maintaining a max temperature of about 2100-2300* F for two to three hours before the tank freezes up.

Another fella mentioned that the apple I was talking about in another post was well regarded by glass blowers, so that should work, I imagine.

How does the glass need to be annealed? (Never a good idea to assume, especially considering that the annealing process for ferrous and non-ferrous metals are completely opposite!)

This might be less of an issue than it could be- I've got a whole pile of wire clothing hangers around, and the plastic bank could be supsended in the center of the hole with them somehow to allow the air to escape around it- assuming, of course, that the neck doesn't expand first!

But, you gave me a valuable clue to the final solution to this when you mention the unglazed pottery- I had only been thinking about wooden vessels, but I would imagine potters have come up with a number of ways to skin this particular cat!

Oil can soak into wood, and I've done that. There may be finishes that can do this as well, but I worry about the final result- I turn thin enough that the only way I can see this being really practical is to soak the entire piece, and then pull it out a day or two later. Assuming that that does not wreck the finish in the container, it would still leave a finish that is bound to be something rather less than even as it drip-dries!

Now, that last idea... that isn't stupid at all, and to be perfectly honest, I think it might be the best suggestion in the bunch. I haven't used or thought about that stuff in quite a while, but I bet it'd do the trick very nicely.

Soak poly in three stages, works very well. Fill, soak, decant to cure, repeat.

I don't want to be discouraging, but you definately won't pick it up in a weekend. Usually you start with a tank of molten glass which you pick up on the end of a long stainless steel pipe (you can use iron water pipe, but no one ever does--a purpose-built pipe is a lot easier to work with for many reasons, but they used to do it forty years ago). Then you need to mess around with the glass to get it into the correct shape and get the heat right. Then, assuming you're doing something into a mold, you basically shove it in and blow like hell (technical term) being careful not to blow out the bottom, etc. Then you mess around for a while more to finish the lip, get the shape straight, etc.

The entire process for a simple piece takes between ten and twenty minutes, but there are a lot of things you can do wrong in that time. Believe me, I'm an expert on messing up pieces.

You need something to use as a "glory hole", which is basically a void you can stick the piece in to warm it up. 2300 would be plenty hot. Here's a site that has a lot of stuff about glass blowing and the guy that runs it has done some of what I'd call "low end" work building his own equipment and trying to work without a big tank of glass. He's done some nice stuff that way, so I can't say it's impossible, but it's not the way I'm familiar with.

The easiest way I can think of to experiment with things would be to find a local glassblower and work out some cooperative thing. They'd probably be happy to try something else and you could see if it was practical without investing a year learning how to blow glass.

What area are you located in? If it's Minnesota, I can probably locate someone that would be interested.

Different glasses have different annealing temperatures. The way we anneal at the place I blow for pieces less than half an inch thick is to put the hot piece in a kiln and hold it at 950 F for at least an hour. Then the kiln is allowed to cool over the next 18 hours till it's below 250. When the kiln is cracked and cooled to room temperature the stuff is finished. If you fail to anneal properly, the pieces will eventually crack from internal stress--sometimes spectacularly.

I hope you let us know what you settle on.

Mike Beede

About 30 some years ago I remember a product that was a taffy-like plastic in a tube. You would squeeze out a blob and roll it into a ball and stick on the end of a straw. You could blow bubbles that would last for quite some time....

Al> "Prometheus" wrote: For me, the vase is all about the outside- I could care >

I remember it more as blowing out your eardrums trying to form a bubble at the end of the straw.

This is exactly how fishing rod builders put the finish coat of resin on a rod. Except the rod keeps rotatong till the finish is dry.

I often go to watch glass blowers at work, on open studio days. They make it look SO EASY. But it's sort of like riding a unicycle--when you see someone try who hasn't learned, it looks IMPOSSIBLE.

BTW, even if you never plan to try it yourself, watching a glassblower at work is totally fascinating.

Back in the bad old days you had to acquire a bit of skill at glass to take chemistry. Some may be old enough to remember fabricating their own apparatus from the generic tubes.

Take a look at this guy:

If he's got anything in the mall, it's out of reach and the mall paid big bucks for it. If you dig around the site, I'll bet you find Something you like.

I remember it being taken away from me. :o)

Mastery never happens in a weekend- but sometimes getting the basics down does! :) One of the beautiful things about craft/trade work is that there is almost a *language* to manual manipulation. And, like spoken languages, learning one makes another easier to figure out later- and learning several makes subsequent ones even easier than that.

I watched a few videos on glass blowing and read through a couple of sites on it after posting this last night, and, without being facetious, I can really say that most people would be amazed at the similaries between woodturning, blacksmithing, and glass blowing. Even though they are three entirely different materials, they all have a set of 5-10 basic core tools, and a similar vocabulary- and they can all complement one another.

Oh, me too. The thing I always repeat to myself on a contiuous loop is this: "If you're not willing to fail, you can't do anything." And so, I fail at things sometimes- I just don't ever let that stop me.

That glory hole looks an awful lot like my forge, really! The forge took me about 3 days to build, mostly scrounging materials, so making another to use as a melter is not that big a deal- I even have some extra forge lining. The biggest problem I can see would be setting up an annealer. (Annealing metal is usually just done by wrapping it in leftover kaowool in my shop, but it looks like glass is a little more touchy.) Maybe an old fridge?

I am in West-central Wisconsin, about an hour from St. Paul. If you know a glass blower that is interested in trading skills in smithing, turning, or cabinet making, I'm willing to travel to Minnesota every so often to do that. I could trade finished goods for some pointers as well- I am a programmer in a sheetmetal job shop, and run the mill and laser cutter there as well (small shop = lots of duties) so there are a lot of opportunities to make things that are otherwise difficult or impossible to find.

My e-mail address off list is prometheus charter.net

I'll undoubtely try it- I make a lot of stuff, and I've been trying to come up with ways to make some exterior light fixtures for my house- I can already do everything *except* make glass domes for them, and I've been putting it off because I want domes, and not carriage-style flat glass shields because the domes could be better integrated with turned lamp bodies.

And, it'd be awfully cool to be able to make glass handles for my flatwork. Forged ironwork is nice, and fun to do- but it's not always the answer for every piece.

I like it!