"How long does it take to melt down your raw
materials to that shape?" he asked, drawing back, with flushed face.
"We don't fill a pot all at once," said the
gaffer. "We put in about a quarter to a third of a charge at a time;
then, when that melts, another lot. When the pots are full, they are
closed up, and we push the fires; the materials are fused and mixed by
a sort of boiling caused by the escape of carbonic acid gas. When the
materials are of poor quality, a sort of scum, called sandiver, or
glass-gall, rises to the top, and must be skimmed off. The metal is
fined, as we say, by keeping it for forty or fifty hours at a
much higher temperature then when we finally begin to work it. After
the bubbles are all out of it, and it has becomes what we call plain,
this is, clear glass, we let it cool a little, regulating the fires so
as to keep it in the best condition for working. It requires a deal of
care and judgment to get it right every time. We blow four days in the
week. Friday and Saturday we clear up, fill the pots, set a new one, if
one has been broken, and get ready for the next week's blowing. Sunday
night the glass in the pots is plain; and at one o'clock the first set of
hands come on."
"In the night? how do you like that?" Lawrence
asked a workman who was lighting his pipe of tobacco with a piece of
red-hot glass.
"Well enough," said the man. "I does my work
and I gits my sleep. We works from one o'clock at night till six in
the morning, then we goes home
|
