the mass in the fiery pot until the last glass completely overlaps the
earlier lump. Now he takes the great glaring ball to an iron mould, and
with a few dexterous turns fashions it into a pear shape. When this is
done the gatherer's duty is ended, and he hands the pipe and glass over
to the blower.
The French and Belgian blowing furnaces are combined
with the melting furnace, but in England and America they are separate,
being constructed with a series of openings through which the blower may
insert his material into an intensely hot chamber. The gas supplying the
heat is burned directly under the blow-holes, being mixed with air from
fire-clay shafts surrounding the burners on the plan of the Bunsen burner.
Slabs of fire-brick distribute the massive heat into hundreds of small jets,
which cannot touch the glass.
The blower's skill is the most marvelous part of
the fascinating series of transformations witnessed in the glass-house,
conjuring the glaring globe (a gigantic dragon's eye) by artful whispers
into a sheet of solid transparency. He takes the pipe from the gatherer,
with the great pear-shaped mass still resting in the mould, and blows a
huge bubble of air into it. Then, alternately blowing and manipulating,
he enlarges the bubble and shapes the mass into the form of a great
decanter with a short neck and very thick bottom. The thinnest part of
the glass next the pipe quickly hardens into the fixed foundation from
which the soft hot
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WINDOW-GLASS BLOWING--A GOOD BEGINNING.
remainder is to grow into a cylinder of the same diameter. In front of
each blow-hole is a long narrow platform at right angles to the furnace,
spanning a deep pit. This is a blower's post. Standing there, he swings
the swelling bulb into the abyss, like an enormous hollow pendulum carved
from flame, coaxing it to expand with frequent timely blowings.
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