Up: Glassmaking
How It Is Made
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while. As soon as the bulb has attained a certain size, he opens
the mould with his left hand and encloses the bulb. Blowing is then
continued until the glass touches the mould at all points, when the
mould is opened and the bottle removed and broken off at the neck.
In "burst-off" work the rough end is merely ground down on a stone
after annealing. In "made" work a smooth finished and moulded end
is formed in the following manner. An assistant, termed a "finisher,"
picks up the bottle in a "gauge"-- an iron bar with sheet-iron jaws
at one end which fit the bottle-- and presents the neck to the furnace
flames. When the end is red-hot and soft, he takes his seat in a kind
of arm-chair and rolls the gauge backwards and forwards along the arms,
shaping the neck with a pair of sugar-tongs with a central shaft of the
same length between the two ends. The shaft terminates in a piece of
brass, which is inserted in the neck to form the inside of the mouth;
and the tongs carry brass squeezes to shape the outside when the tongs
are squeezed against the glass by the finisher.
The shaped bottle is lifted on a fork, and
transferred to a "leer," or annealing oven. All glass
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