Placing Glass on an Optic Mold for Glassblowing

Video Transcript

Hi! I’m Jim McKelvey with Third Degree Glass Factory in St. Louis. You can check us out on the web at www.stlglass.com. Today, we’re going to learn about glassblowing for expertvillage.com. The other thing we’re going to do this piece is we’re going to put a foot on it, and we’re going to put it in the optic mold. This is a very good piece for beginners to make because it’s easy, and it’s also very forgiving. If you make a mistake, the optic mold and the way we’re going to open will tend to hide that mistake, and you’ll get a very interesting result. So, this is a very good piece for beginners to make as first color piece. Let’s talk about the optic mold for a second. This is an optic mold, and it’s just an aluminum mold with ridges in it. I’m going to put the piece into the optic mold. I’m not going to hold this in my hand when I do it. I want you to see the inside of the optic mold and see the contour of the piece and how that piece sort of fits. To use an optic mold correctly, you need to have the piece basically the same shape as the mold. In this case, what we’re going to do is a fairly standard procedure. We’re going to get this piece very, very hot and then we’re going to shove it into the mold. In doing so, we’re going to make the mold indent the outside of the piece. That will cause a change in the optics of the piece. It will also change the thickness of the walls of the piece. This is a very good way of hiding errors, and it’s also a very good way to make the piece more interesting. If gets a lot of bang for the buck when you use an optic mold. I’m tall enough that I can use this optic mold without a step stool, but I’m not sure that everybody watching this video is 6 foot. I’m going to have Fern get the step stool here, and I’m going to show you the process for safely using a step stool with the optic mold. I’m getting the piece very hot. Now, when you go into an optic mold with a step stool, what you do is go into the mold first then go up. Blow. When you’re done blowing, it’s an excellent time to put in some jack lines, because right now the top of the piece, which didn’t get stuck into the mold, is nice and hot so I can stop my jack line in there. I’m having a little trouble. Flatten that out on the marver and put that jack line in.

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