Maximus - The World's Largest Bottle of Wine Ever Made

[JLF]

That's a really tiny Heathway lathe.... found this link from the ASGS.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lL1uXgznT64&feature=player_embedded

[Riley]

geebus.

quite an elaborate process. that lathe is insane, so is the 50 head cradle.

[Mr. Wonka]

What a bunch of noobs. Sepulworld could have done that with a piece of 32 HW and a minor burner, with a wooden dowel as a punty. I'm not impressed. :tongue2:

[rockstar glassworks]

wow....and I'm going to knock out some 4" spoons today....I feel so insignificant all of a sudden..

[poncho]

thats absolutely wonderful! thats the type of shit i wanna be involved with :)

[ALIEN!]

I'd like to be involved in emptying that thing:party:

[STROKER]

holy crap that is big.
i was also blown away at the graphite mold they handturned in the beginning of the vid.
i use one of the largest production scale lathes there are in my woodshop and that thing makes mine look tiny.
hell the guy is literally inside with a roughing gouge cleaning the mold up by hand.
i would really like to be involved in a large scale build like that someday.

awesome...

[Dom]

Man that is insane, I saw the first blank and I was like thats it? I didnt realized that the bottle would be made of like 5 blanks.

It would have been hillarious if they dropped it off the fork at the end.

[hippi]

thats fuckin sick! i didnt know they had lathes that big lol... they shoulda put someone in it for kicks

[Adapt]

Super cool!!!! I hope they remembered the "FRAGILE" sticker on the shipping box...

[frillcappa]

that is amazing, thanks for posting, i think the most incredible part is making those blanks by hand, thats crazy they can make tubing that big by hand and its the same on all the blanks, thats alot of glass. thanks for posting

[Deez]

coe?

[menty666]

I'd guess probably around 86 or so. I'm guessing there's a lot of editing out where they're pre-warming the blanks, because though my gut reaction was to simply say a high number around 90, it is impressive to get that much together on the lathe, that thick, and not have it shatter all to hell.

[Blade]

great post!

[Coal]

Wow, I say wow, what a process. And that huge graphite mold.... crazy.
Hey for real, thanks for posting that link!

[kage]

What a bunch of noobs. Sepulworld could have done that with a piece of 32 HW and a minor burner, with a wooden dowel as a punty. I'm not impressed. :tongue2:

nomad made one with a tube of 12 standard

[blueflame glass worxs]

safty was out to lunch on that one , no one had masks on nuts.

[Bro-crispy]

http://www.radio.cz/en/section/curraffrs/all-hail-maximus-the-worlds-largest-bottle-of-wine

(old largest bottle, 2004)

http://www.radio.cz/en/section/special/charlie-parriotts-magnum-opus-a-bid-to-create-the-worlds-biggest-wine-bottle

(New largest bottle, from the video)


Menty, I too was amazed to see them fusing those giant sections of soft glass on the lathe. I've never seen or heard of anything like that before. Boro or quartz, sure.
But soft glass, that is new to me.



But now I'm confused- in the article he is saying that it is borosilicate, but clearly that is soft glass. So . . . ?

[l33t:weasel]

was it clearly soft glass? or is that just your impression from the metal blow pipes and furnace gathers? i don't know much about soft glass but can't imagine it surviving that process.

[poncho]

you can work boro out of a furnace -- in the video it doesn't look anything like the way you would normally work soft glass, they gather on a huge bubble, which would collapse if it was soft glass. As well as attaching all those parts, I just dont see how it could be soft glass. Im finding more and more that boro is used on a much larger scale more often. I was doing a bit of research and Frederick Carder of the early Steuben glass, cast a huge Indian head out of boro sometime around 1954. It happened to be pyrex infact. It wouldn't suprise me if it was boro, or for that matter if it wasnt. If anyone wants a photo of that Indian head i can scan it

[poncho]

“And also, the kind of glass we’re using is different from the type you see in the shops round Prague. It is called borosilicate glass, which is like technical glass. It is used in laboratories and also places that need special heat-treated or heat-tempered glass, which won’t expand or contract due to heat, or cold. So, a glass fireplace - that would be made out of the same SIMAX, or Pyrex glass.” -- from that second link that crispy posted

[themoch]

so according to that article, it was made of Simax borosilicate

[Greymatter Glass]

yeah... deff boro. There are pressed glass shops all around that melt boro, gather it, and press it into technical glass forms like airplane light lenses...

pretty sure a lot of the traffic light lenses are boro as well.

Being boro also explains why they stained/painted it green. If it were a soda-lime glass they would have just used a colored batch out of a production bottle line or something probably...

Either way - that was amazing.

[Bro-crispy]

I'm definitly leaving open the possibility that it is boro (I meant to write ". . .but clearly that is soft glass. Right?). But I just watched the vid again and it still looks soft to me.

First of all you can gather over a big thin bubble with soft glass. It's called a Post Gather, and it is common technique for taking the last gather before blowing into a mold. In this way you set your neckline, more or less establish your shape, then gather up to but not over that neck line and use that gather heat to blow into the mold. Then you do not have to reestablish the neck with that massive amount of glass or worry as much about keeping it tight in the mold.

I know you can work boro out of a furnace. I've just never really seen or heard of it effectively done. Those gathers in the video, especially that post gather, are beautiful and flawless. I really can't imagine boro working that easily and smoothly. Plus this stuff really seems to flow. Check out the one point where they lay on a moil-wrap (this is a gather of glass spread over the base of your neckline, up on the pipe, if it is getting too cold and cracking) which is standard furnace work. I've seen Marcel's Draco glory hole, but I don't remember him taking gathers but instead balling up 40 mm rod on a lathe then bringing it to the glory hole. And he had to seriously supplement with gtt hand torches at the bench. And I've seen the color dips that a lot of you guys are doing now. And I know that boro is capable of huge, incredible things that many don't know about. I just moved out of this guys shop, where I did my measly lampworking feet away form these icebergs, which are at least 3" thick, cast boro- http://www.davidruth.com///www.davidruth.com/[/URL] .

But the glass that they are blowing just doesn't look like boro to me. Yet, like I said, what they are doing at the lathe doesn't seem possible in soft glass. Just my opinion, and predicament :)

And yes, I'd love to see the indian head!

[Bro-crispy]

Doug- I was thinking about that color issue too, as I agree, you would think that they would just use pull from a color pot instead of painting it. I thought the reason why maybe they wouldn't is that the variations in the thickness would show much more, especially at the seams. It would be kind of ugly and they would probably end up painting it anyhow.

Now, not sure if you would see these variations when it's full of red wine, but just a thought.

[themoch]

http://www.radio.cz/en/section/special/charlie-parriotts-magnum-opus-a-bid-to-create-the-worlds-biggest-wine-bottle

...

But now I'm confused- in the article he is saying that it is borosilicate, but clearly that is soft glass. So . . . ?

are you serious? the article says it's boro... the ARTIST says it's boro...


“And also, the kind of glass we’re using is different from the type you see in the shops round Prague. It is called borosilicate glass, which is like technical glass. It is used in laboratories and also places that need special heat-treated or heat-tempered glass, which won’t expand or contract due to heat, or cold. So, a glass fireplace - that would be made out of the same SIMAX, or Pyrex glass.”

here's a "how it's made" clip that shows people doing similar things with boro furnaces:

http://science.discovery.com/videos/how-its-made-technical-lights.html

[hwcglass]

I may have missed someone else saying this but the confusion here of why it looks like soft glass, why it does not move like 33 boro . . .

because it is not 33 boro.

More like 50. Moves like softish.

[Bro-crispy]

Pressing traffic lights is a bit of a far cry from the wine bottle. But- I already said I'm open to the fact of it being boro. I just have never heard or seen of anything like it before. That's all. If there is one thing that I've learned, it is that possibilities are endless, limited only by the mind . . .

The more I think about it, the more it seems like it could be boro. Astounding. I can't believe there is a factory out there that does stuff like this, and nobody here has heard/ posted about it? I wonder what else they make out of boro?

[Rosentech]

Simax makes all their flask and bell jar blanks off hand. That most likely was Kavalier's factory. I'm pretty sure QVF also makes thier big 100L flasks and bell jars off hand. I've seen some super old video of a german factory making boro flask blanks, looks exactly like movement of the glass in this video. This is 33COE boro.

Also remember, the industrial furnaces they use in CZ are nothing like the electric crucibles we are now using to melt color. It's really no comparison when you think about the industrial scale of the glass factories in Europe. It's sad to say the age of industrial glass manufacturing in this country is over :(

[bombheadster]

I don't think furnace working boro so elegantly is all that surprising actually. When you have all the resources you can imagine at your disposal, you can do quite a lot. Working boro in a furnace is extremely tough to pull off ON THE PERSONAL SCALE THAT WE ALL WORK AT. No doubt, there were specialized engineers behind the design and construction of the furnace to produce the perfect temperature for a boro furnace. It's hard for us to accept it as boro, since we do not work on a large industrial scale. Obviously, those guys were pushing some serious limits, but I don't understand the skepticism about working boro like that. One look at the ring seals they did on that lathe and it's obviously boro.

And that post gather was straight dirty, by the way. Super ballin

[somewhere]

Yes it does look like the Kavalier factory. Melting boro down isn't that hard your only talkin 300 or 400 degrees hotter then soft glass. I melt some soft glasses up to 2600f you can gather and work boro at 23 to 2400. They also have a cheap abundant supply of natural gas.

I have always considered a post gather referred to a gather taken on a finished shape and usually does not cover the whole piece. Such as mezzo stampo or post gathering a foot by taking the finished shape still on the blow pipe and gather only on the bottom. Potato patato but if a post gather is just a gathere on a bubble I do that every time.

[Bro-crispy]

Well, shows what I know. No better way to show you're a jackass than announcing it on the internet :) Ok, there might be better ways, but that is a good one.

Anyhow, that is very cool to say the least. I'm in awe. And yeah, that post-gather, or whatever we want to call it, was definitely super ballin'. Those guys are incredibly skilled. Now I'm really curious about the process of working boro offhand vs. traditional soft glass, like what steps and techniques do you have to add, or remove. It looks pretty similar form the short clips they give you, but I imagine it's a bit of a different animal.

Also, did anyone catch that close-up shot of the gold chain puff? Just love it . . .

[Greymatter Glass]

Well, shows what I know. No better way to show you're a jackass than announcing it on the internet :) Ok, there might be better ways, but that is a good one.



I can think of MUCH better ways....