Glassblowing 1 #4: Cane

Nathan Michaels - April 3, 2019, 6 p.m.

This class started with making cane. The process starts with some color on a (not very large) bit of glass. Then, after it's melted in and smoothed into a good cylinder, the tip is quenched and grabbed with diamond shears. The whole thing gets dragged until it's very long and thin and laid down on a ladder on the floor. Once it cools, which happens pretty quickly, it's chopped into pieces.

Cane after it's been chopped up

Notice the optic molds in the background.

We put the cane in an optic mold and blew stuff into it. I made another pint glass (maybe a bit less than a pint; didn't use the pint mold this time)

Pint glass with some orange cane

and Sari made a vase.

Vase with cane on it, still hot

We could have made more crossy patterns by doing another round in the mold. I'm also told that people use cane to draw.

Jen didn't make this class either. Expect 2 posts in the future from her, making up classes.