Pulling Horns/Hollow Canes

[Ben 'Spice' Crowley]

I am finally venturing off the deep end and trying to develop my own style (I know I know I don't even have the basics fully down yet)

I am very much so interested in taking my work in an abstract direction and I can't seem to get my work to where I'd like it.

I can do a 0-90 degree bend in a tube but I can't seem to pull even horns, they don't get hat sleek flow look with a steady contriction of size.

Any tips or help on pulling/shaping horns/hollow canes would be appreciated

[VOORHEES]

You have to use an even heat...it's basically a soft steady pull, I have my punty on the tip too, once my horn is shaped on the piece, I take off the punty and pull my tip to a nice point.

Most of the time I put a cylinder of solid on the piece, then heat the tip of the mass and pull it into a horn.

Marvering the horn before you put it on the piece helps you keep a nice shape, you can also marver it into a nice taper as well.

I hope it helps, good luck!

[boxfan willy]

What Voorhees said. I usually make all the horns with each step. Marver out your cylinders(make 3 if you need 2), strong punty on the base, small to tease out the horn tip. Kinda like goblet tops...

Good luck,

boxfan
www.theflowmagazine.com

[Ben 'Spice' Crowley]

K, what if I am making a shit load of horns/canes to weld to each other into a mass of horns/canes? same tech start with a horn and add cylinders then pull or do I do the horns first then assemble?

[Shiny]

I melt whatever color really well to the spot I want the horn to be. Get both the color and piece really hot and join them. Then I flame cut the color off somewhere down the line depending on how much of it I want to leave on the piece / how big or long the horn will be.

Then I melt the color which is now sticking off the piece down into a blob. Dont melt the blob too far or it will get too wide of a base for the horn you want to make. You want the base to be well melted in, but the blob should be like a sphere stuck on the piece when you stop melting, not like a half circle totally melted in. There should be a bit of a crease there and the joint. Watch out though, creases can also mean that the joint isnt melted well.

Then I let it cool just a bit while I grab a punty and heat up the punty tip just a bit so it will grab the glob well. If the punty tip is cold, it might pop off and fuck your day up. and your horn.

Heat the glob back up to a bright glow, but not so hot that it starts melting the base wider, therefore screwing up your horn shape in the end. Tag your punty to the tip of the glob. Slowly pull it out as you turn the piece over to make it fall in whichever direction.

The horn needs to FLOW out. FLOW the horn out very slowly, just as it loses enough heat so that you would have to start pulling, STOP. You should reach your perfect horn shape just as you get to the part where you have to pull on it. If you are pulling with any force, you are stretching your glass, getting divits and crannies and all sorts of uglies that can be repaired by polishing, but polishing might fuck up your shape too since its just a stand alone horn and could bend if you heat it through while polishing.

The point of not melting the edge in where the glob contacts the piece is that when you pull it out, the glob shrinks in diameter and that crease disappears, bringing everything back down to the original diameter of the nice hot melted in seal you made in the first step.

To use my favorite metaphor, if the blob looks like a breast, youve got melted in edges. That is bad for horns because you will be pulling your blob down. If you want really short horns, its ok.

If the blob looks like somebody glued marbles on the back of their hand, that is right and your horns will be beautiful. As long as that original seal was hot.

Flowing the horn out will take practice. Feeling the moment when you need to stop moving the horn and start moving the piece to keep the horn where it is until it cools enough will also take practice. You can always make a little clear bridge cold sealed from piece to horn tip to keep your horn from moving while you re melt the seal if you need to go back. That is a very useful thing when revisiting joints.

Have fun

[Ben 'Spice' Crowley]

Thanks for that, really I appreciate it

though I am talking about tube horns, not rods.

http://www.glasspipes.org/Img221395__Img221395_ad10.jpg.asp

Here is a few of the pieces that have inspired this new move on my behalf. I don't want the same work but the same style tube shaping applies to what I've been sketching...

MAD PROPS TO 'COLTON' your work is jaw dropping man.

[Shiny]

Oh woops. I thought you were asking about both. I was bored waiting on the autoclave at work. Sorry about the novel

Damn that work is sick

[Mr. Whale dick]

it's all about gravity too.....it's your friend, not your enemy

[VOORHEES]

Yeah, I definitely use gravity for a lot of my hollow droop sections and hollow horns.

[jr23]

Yep every horn I used to do was coil built. I now do them solid and hollow. But I used to make spoons only for every and I would make a coil carb and then let it thicken up and pull it to a horn.

I know these are a little cheesy but they let me learn a bit about it all and then they are small so they are real easy and don't take much more skill than a blow out carb.

If it looked shitty I would tear the end off and make it a carb. Try again on the next one.

[Ben 'Spice' Crowley]

word thanks. I am going to go play trying to see if I can get these steps down. Im still looking for some tips on assembling masses of prebuilt horns.

[VOORHEES]

The best way to get the hang of sticking masses together, use a bridge from the tip of one horn to the tip on another...then rage your connection till it's nice.

My main goal when I do horns and whatnot...one touch weld...I stick it, hold it until is sets and polish out some minimal stress from where they were put together. The key is to have both spots hot enough that they will accept each other.

[bc]

If your tryin to develop your own style my advice would to NOT put on horns, everybody already does that = not your own style. Just a thought to think about.......

[Ben 'Spice' Crowley]

To specify, It doesn't need to be individual from existing styles nor does it need to be seperate from another artists, For it to be my own style it just needs to be indicative of my other orginal work in any medium.

In developong my own style I decided to take a look at my drawings and paintings and find a common ground for glass. My art is usually abstract and pretty jagged looking. Lot's of horns/wavey points, lot's and lot's of over lapping areas and intertwined sections.

I have attached three of my all time favorites, all done in pencil then scanned and photoshopped.

I know my glass will NEVER look exactly like any of these but a guy can have a direction right?

[Swampy]

Yeah that's a good skill too if you can translate what's in your head onto a piece of paper, then into a 3D piece of glass but dood you forgot to attach the pics dood :-)

[Ben 'Spice' Crowley]

I blame the safety break

[Bryan]

how did you make that last one? its so sick!!

[Ben 'Spice' Crowley]

drew it then scanned, seperated it into shaded sections and applied gradients then I copied it twice and overlayed it as offset layers, then I spent a couple hours moving bits above or below the layers around it. I applied a couple of the filters and changed the transparency on the levels, then I merged em all up and viola....this is currently residing on my chest from my left hip to my right shoulder, although it's only an outline of the green a.t.m because the artist that started it sucked DICK!

[Ben 'Spice' Crowley]

here is the revised desig for my tattoo, I am still adding elements and altering it constantly.

[VED]

that shit is sick

[Ben 'Spice' Crowley]

thank you, I have been working on it for the better part of my adult life, the actual drawing took me way over a year to do, then it sat on my wall for about six months until i scanned it the photoshopping took up alot of time because it has changed so much since, I started in NOV of 2004 and it's still changing lol I have finally decided that it will be all black and shade ( I think the color on my skin is tacky so i'ts getting covered by this) and as long as I see a good artist he will be able to add to me as I add to it from what I'm told