warm to yield under its own weight he opens it, when it looks somewhat
like a rumpled sheet of paper. He smooths it out by passing a wooden block
over it, the wheel is turned, and the stone with its sheet passes into the
cooling oven.
When comes its turn to be piled, the flattener
lifts the glass off the stone with a long-pronged fork and puts it on a
car at the mouth of the annealing tunnel, calling a "leer," or lays it on
the rods in case the more advantageous "rod leer" is used. By the
gradual and slow loss of heat in passing through the "leer" it is tempered
for service.
It is in the flattening oven that cylinder
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glass loses its beautiful fire surface; for when first blown it has all
the brilliancy of its elder and more aristocratic sister crown-glass.
But the fire of the oven dulls it, and the flattener, if not careful,
burrs it and scratches it, and after it leaves his hands all its first
glow is gone. The American manufacturer can melt his glass as thoroughly
as it can be melted by his great foreign competitors of Belgium and England,
the blower can blow it as well, but until the system of flattening be
changed, and more painstaking care be given to the industry from masters
down through all the ranks of workmen in the factory, foreign glass must
hold its own
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