Up: Glassmaking
Flat Glass: 25 of 66
|
|
| |
continued to be the accepted method for making window glass
until about 1903.
A brief description of this process
is of interest in order to indicate the great skill and
arduous labor necessary to produce the so-called flat glass
by this method.
The blower, gatherer and snapper
constitute what is known as a "shop" in this trade. The
gatherer, using a heavy blowpipe about five feet long, gathers
a small ball of molten glass on the end, removes it from the
furnace, blows it slightly and then gathers more glass (Fig.
1). This operation is repeated four or five times until he
gathers sufficient glass to produce a cylinder of the desired
size. The ball thus gathered weighs from twenty to forty
pounds, according to the size of the cylinder to be produced.
The gatherer carries the blowpipe with
the adhering mass of semiplastic glass to the "blower's block,"
an iron mold set in water and lined with charcoal to prevent
the surface
|
|