It's Easy
Lucas - May 1, 2019, 12:35 a.m.
Nathan and Jen made a paperweight when we first arrived, and I spent a good 30 minutes sanding down the base of a wonky drinking glass I made last week.
Once we were all at the bench, we got some helpful pointers and demos from the resident expert, which we spent most of our remaining time attempting to replicate.
Important note: if you mash the glass on the marver instead of rolling lightly, the glass will probably twist and not look like the diagram. It still looks cool though.
We used up a lot of pipes and punties quickly while practicing technique. This made it a bit harder to make stuff, since we found ourselves waiting for pipes to heat back up. Next time we'll plan ahead better. We did get to make some funky shapes by way of failing quickly, though:
Towards the end of our time, we came up with an exercise that forced us to practice good methods while still getting to make stuff: Start out following a step-by-step guide to making a pint glass (helpfully presented in diagram form on a nearby printout), and if we let the glass get too cold or spend more than a reasonable amount of time stuck on any one step, let the next person start over. We only had one success during the time we had left, but it only took 15 minutes to make a glass; last week's successful attempts took roughly an hour each.