Speaking of Marble Factories...

[kbinkster]

There has been a lot of discussion in the Safety Break Forum about a couple of TV shows showing a couple of different marble factories.

Anyway, I found this video of a marble run (a tribute to Dave McCullough) done at the Jabo factory (the factory shown on Dirty Jobs that aired 12/08/09). I think this video gives a more detailed explanation of the whole process.

Nothing beats handmade marbles, IMO, but machine-produced marbles do have their purpose in life. Hot glass is just awesome!

http://www.viddler.com/explore/joemarbles/videos/1/

[LoneWolfandSon]

very nice thanks!

[petto]

see all that glass dust when he puts the glass in the crusher?????? that guy is going to be hurting when he gets older, that cloud was so big it pretty much blocked him out.

[Swampy]

Thanks and you have a lovely smile.

[B-Rye-oNeR]

that was wild when he was shoveling/throwing the frit and dust into the furnace ...shit was flying everywhere

[JLF]

50 seconds in and god damn that is a scarey glass dust cloud...

[kbinkster]

You are so sweet, Swampy. Thank you.


About the glass dust cloud... OSHA considers it nuisance dust and nothing more. The silica is not crystalline silica.

[babbyjesus]

You are so sweet, Swampy. Thank you.


About the glass dust cloud... OSHA considers it nuisance dust and nothing more. The silica is not crystalline silica.

That maybe but silicosis doesn't sound fun.So I'd clean up a bit,It couldn't heart.

[The Madhatter]

Wow! Thank's for sharing that!

The cloud looked scary indeed - I put on a dust mask when sweeping my little shop up, and to see someone standing in a cloud that thick blew my mind!

[kbinkster]

:lol I'm someone who protects herself from the dust of dryer lint. I sure as heck wouldn't want to breathe in any of that glass dust! However, OSHA says that the glass dust does not have crystalline silica in it, the form of silica that causes silicosis.

I think that the dust is pretty hard to avoid, but it's pretty easy to wear a dust mask when handling it.

[goldmanglass]

However, OSHA says that the glass dust does not have crystalline silica in it, the form of silica that causes silicosis.

can anyone elaborate on this? this sounds like good news but if OSHA is anything like the FDA i guess we cant assume they're using logic.

cool video too, who would ever think the agitator in their paint can came from these crazy contraptions.

[Batou]

i don't care what OSHA says -- i would be wearing a heavy duty mask, that cloud scared me. the rest was interesting until luch break-- if i wanted to see fat people eat i'd record myself!. it's an interesting process-- i'll have to look out for that dirty jobs.

[kbinkster]

I believe that the initial manufacturing of glass is dangerous, because it involves handling silica that still has its crystalline structure.

http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/silfact1.html

However, once the glass has been made, it has been melted and that changes things. The silica is no longer free crystalline in structure. The glass used in the marble factory is recycled glass. So, presumably, the dust does not contain crystalline silica.

http://www.wrap.org.uk/downloads/AbrasiveFactsMay04Amended.5f84a168.418.pdf


That being said, I would still wear a mask or respirator. Why risk it? Even if it's not a silicosis threat, it is still an irritant.

[faded]

wow, sounds like some people have never had a dirty job. i could tell stories that would cause concern, yet here i live.

it's ok everyone, he lived thru it.

ever been stuck in rush hour traffic? might as well breathe silver fumes. :)


i think it is good to have concern, but it needn't blur your focus. do people really think the host of "dirty jobs" has not been properly trained on safety? is he oblivious to the fact that they make dusts masks? i highly doubt it. isn't this a TV SHOW? wouldn't really be a dirty job if he didn't get dirty, now would it?

[ALIEN!]

Great video Binkster! Rep

[kbinkster]

Thanks for the rep points!

Hey, be aware that bead release and kiln wash do have the crystalline silica in them and can cause silicosis.

[Meerkat]

Great video, it left me with a a bunch of questions though.

1. If I understood it correctly, they do two types of marbles runs, one for industrial marbles and one for pretty/collectable marbles, correct?

2. So for the industrial marbles, I would assume they could care less what colour the glass is, no?

3. Industrial marlbes i can understand, that is something needed by a companyt that they can supply and I assume makes money on. But I don't understand what these runs of pretty marbles are for, they are not hand made, the colours and swirls are random, they are just plopped out by a machine, thus I doubt they would sell for much, do they take the thousands of machine made marbles to glass shows and sell them, I just don't understand, these seem more like the kind of marbles you would buy a bag of 50 for $5 at a toy store. No disrepect mind you to the people making them, I just simply don't understand and would like to know more about the final product as opposed to the production method (which was interesting).

4. Who are these people, I don't mean that in a rude way, I mean it as in, are they like a famous group of glass people, are the names mentioned throughout the video the names of legendary glass workers or pioneers? Are they kind of like their own version of AGI like event or regular glass event where they all get togeather and run the marble machine once a year or something, just curious for more of a back story.

should I know these people

[kbinkster]

Great video, it left me with a a bunch of questions though.

1. If I understood it correctly, they do two types of marbles runs, one for industrial marbles and one for pretty/collectable marbles, correct?
They make industrial marbles, but they also make marbles for the toy industry. These marbles are the ones that become collectible over time. From what I gathered reading on a marble forum, in addition to the regular marble runs (they run the factory all the time), they had the idea to get some of the collectors together and let them invest in some special commemorative/tribute runs.



2. So for the industrial marbles, I would assume they could care less what colour the glass is, no?

I wouldn't make that assumption. Some colors are more expensive than others. Some might be harder or softer or work differently in a batch, as well. I believe that all of Jabo's industrial marbles are mostly clear, but tinted various colors. You can special order special colors. This makes sense to me - as the clear tinted soft glass I work with is stiffer/harder than the opaque. I imagine it is cheaper, too, since less colorant/colored glass is used.


3. Industrial marlbes i can understand, that is something needed by a companyt that they can supply and I assume makes money on. But I don't understand what these runs of pretty marbles are for, they are not hand made, the colours and swirls are random, they are just plopped out by a machine, thus I doubt they would sell for much, do they take the thousands of machine made marbles to glass shows and sell them, I just don't understand, these seem more like the kind of marbles you would buy a bag of 50 for $5 at a toy store. No disrepect mind you to the people making them, I just simply don't understand and would like to know more about the final product as opposed to the production method (which was interesting).

These are the kind of marbles that are bought at the toy store. That's exactly what they make. The tribute run shown in this video, however, had some special colors mixed in.

The colors are hand-picked. The machine doesn't pick what goes into each marble. The operators of the machines have an idea of what they can expect. So, to some degree, they have a range of what they are looking for in a final marble and the machine helps to make lots and lots of them.


4. Who are these people, I don't mean that in a rude way, I mean it as in, are they like a famous group of glass people, are the names mentioned throughout the video the names of legendary glass workers or pioneers? Are they kind of like their own version of AGI like event or regular glass event where they all get togeather and run the marble machine once a year or something, just curious for more of a back story.

should I know these people

This blog post explains some of the fascination:
http://ourfriendben.wordpress.com/2009/01/14/jabo-a-classic/
and another
http://joemarbles.com/3Marble%20Articles/David%20Chamberlain/0010%20Jabo,%20Inc.,%20Reno,%20Ohio.htm

Jabo is one of two toy marble manufacturers left in the US. It's pretty special to collectors.

Here is their website:
http://www.jabovitro.com/splash.htm
There's a section for taking a tour of their facilities.

[ralph]

Really cool video! Thanks.

[kage]

nice video. if glass wasn't interesting enough, throw in some backwoods glass makers with mullets and machinery: now that's pure entertainment! thanks for sharing.

[Greymatter Glass]

Meerkat, in addition to Kim's reply...

1. yep.

2. As explained in one of the videos...think it was the Dirty jobs episode, the industrial marbles are used mostly in spray paint cans. For whatever reason not divulged they demand a standardized light blue tinted marble. It's probably something to do with their patents or need to know the chemical makeup of the glass.

3. Again in one of the videos the guy says there's a marble that sold for like $120 or so.... so yes, they have some perceived value even being recently manufactured. In the DJ episode he totally bullshits Mike Rowe about Goldstone, saying it's a mineral mined in Germany and very hard to get or something.... it's just glass with copper in it. Special glass, bur certainly not mined. And not hard to get. And I really don't get the whole "toy" marble collectors things... but there's no accounting for the wants of others. I guess some of it is that these ARE the same marbles you pay $5 for 50 for, but somehow graded by "experts" as being better than others... and that gives them value. But in the DJ episode you see them adding color by hand with rods and a small propane torch...that's deff not the 50/$5 marbles...and the tribute run was more for the patrons than the end value of the marbles to a collector.

And yes, they have shows just like coin and stamp collectors do, they bring in huge collections of tens of thousands of small machine made marbles and sit around explaining to themselves why something spit out of a machine by the thousands is worth a weeks salary and something hand made one of a kind isn't any interest to them. (yes, I've been to a local marble collectors show...)

4. Jabo marbles are certainly a known name in machine made marbles.... marbleking is the other one I know of.

[kbinkster]

Well, marble collecting is probably like koi collecting to some extent. What makes one koi worth $2,00- 3,000, while another could be valued at $50,000? They could both be genetically perfect fish. But, one might have just the right colors in just the right balance for someone's taste. It's luck of the draw, really.

[Meerkat]

Thanks greymatter, that's exactly what I was wanting to know, I was just being to polite to ask it.

I just really didn't see anything special about these tens of thousands of pumped out machine marbles and why they could be collectors or worth anything and even be compared in worthyness or value to an intricate hand made marble. I can see them becoming valuable with age, such as I have some marbles from when my grandparents were kids and most likely they were made on big machines like these and now they are antiques and cool and worth something.

[kebira]

I'm a collector of both antique and contemporary machine made marbles, and can verify that many multi-colored machine- mades are not only sought by collectors ,but are fairly rare in their numbers. Certain color combo's , such as the "Superman" or the "Rebel" fetch hundreds dependent on condition. Re-make these type of combo's with a hit of lutz and most serious collectors are reaching for the zipper. I would guess the guy's in the picture were past workers in the glass houses that florished in the southeast US during the forties and fifties. We forget how important places like West Virginia and many other southern states were in the expansion of glass art.These were guys that would begin crafting art out of slag glass at the end of a run for presents or sale to suppliment their pay.It's the epicenter of the modern glass movement.Their skills were as relevent to glass as any others today. It was machine-made, yea, but you can see in the vidoe that a sense of craft was needed to get the mibs out the other side. Old school,for sure. It's funny that Tuesday night ,the "Dirty Jobs" series took it to the very same operation, with lots more detail.It was pretty cool.Reminded me of WWII vets shuffling around an old tank, almost passing on something before it's completely forgotton by most.
Collecting marbles got me into glass . Having seen all sorts of high-end studio stuff,awesome pipe work, and gorgeous art pieces (real Mickelson mark ,I am) hasn't diminished my appreciation of the early marble industry in this country. Those old guys are still kicking it in the flame.It's probably the one thing that still holds any passion in them.I salute them.

[loydb]

OSHA used to be cool with sawdust as well... You couldn't pay me to inhale that cloud on a regular basis.

Cool video though!

[somewhere]

Originally goldstone was traded and sold as a semi precious stone. The process to make it is still rare and this is not something easily reproduced even with today's technology. The melt has to be cooled in the pot for extremely long time to allow the crystals to grow. Then the whole pot is pulled out and broken up. It's not just copper but also chrome and either by itself won't get you there.

[Greymatter Glass]

Still, it's hardly mined, and it's not impossible to get any more as was suggested in the show. I wonder if marble collectors know what it really is?

[Meerkat]

First, I'd like to say that I am not disparaging the people in the video at all, they look totally nice and fun to hang with and I'd totally be into watching a marble machine do it's thing.

Also I (probably like a lot of people on here) are really into complex machines making things, I love "How it's made" type shows where you can just watch all these machines make every day widgets, it's facinating and these complex machines still have to be run and maintained by humans, but in the end they are just putting out widgets, it could be something ordinary or really neat, but in the end, it's just a machine made thing, the fact that humans work the machine doesn't make one widget different than any other widget IMO>


I'm a collector of both antique and contemporary machine made marbles, and can verify that many multi-colored machine- mades are not only sought by collectors ,but are fairly rare in their numbers. Certain color combo's , such as the "Superman" or the "Rebel" fetch hundreds dependent on condition. Re-make these type of combo's with a hit of lutz and most serious collectors are reaching for the zipper.

See that just doesn't make sence to me, granted everyone is entitled to find whatever it is that they like to be collectable, but when watching that video and hearing what you said, the only creative aspect I see by a human is choosing which colours are used and then it's all just physics and randomness produced within the machine to create various different colour swirls. Sure a human picked the colours, but why does that make the end product collectable. It would be like if I loaded up a custom built machine with different colours of paint and it just randomly squirted out blobs and lines onto canvases and they rolled off an assembly line, some of them might come out looking really cool, but it's just a machine made thing, not something to ooh and ahh over and go OMG that is so collectable.


Their skills were as relevent to glass as any others today. It was machine-made, yea, but you can see in the vidoe that a sense of craft was needed to get the mibs out the other side.

Again I am not disparing these guys and I think anyone who works on a machine on a factory line is making something and it takes skills and depending on the product it can be seen as art, but it in the end it's working and maintaining a machine versus skilled hand crafted work.

I think what it boils down to me personally is that it leaves a bad taste in my mouth because it seems like what is being promoted is that these tiny size marbles with randomly made patterns, produced in the tens of thousands in a day can be worth more individually than something someone has hand crafted and worked on all day and put a lot of energy, artistic skill and craft into.

[kbinkster]

See that just doesn't make sence to me, granted everyone is entitled to find whatever it is that they like to be collectable, but when watching that video and hearing what you said, the only creative aspect I see by a human is choosing which colours are used and then it's all just physics and randomness produced within the machine to create various different colour swirls.

That's precisely what makes some things desirable. Finding the one that is aesthetically pleasing out of a big bunch of randomly made items. The fact that there are only so many marbles made in a specific run and out of each run, there are only so many that have "the look" is what makes something collectible.

[kbinkster]

I think what it boils down to me personally is that it leaves a bad taste in my mouth because it seems like what is being promoted is that these tiny size marbles with randomly made patterns, produced in the tens of thousands in a day can be worth more individually than something someone has hand crafted and worked on all day and put a lot of energy, artistic skill and craft into.

It's kind of apples and oranges, even though they're both glass spheres. Different strokes for different folks. Just like you apparently place a higher value on a hand made marble, some other people are going to put a higher value on a specific machine made marble.

I see the appreciation for machine made marbles as a good thing. It could be the gateway for someone to discover hand made marbles.

[loydb]

Yeah, on the whole, I'd rather they like marbles than not, but it would be nice if there was more of a market for all the gorgeous marbles that are lovingly handmade.