Zong advice needed

[SYNlatheman]

Hey everyone time for my first thread. So a really good friend of mine asked me to make his girlfriend a custom piece, he wants a single bubble zong with colored pinches. The bubble and colored pinches i can do no problem but getting the proper bends is puzzling me. I tried some this morning by just heating about 7in. of the tube to orange hot just enough to move stoping the lathe and tagging the middle of my hot spot and pulling down with steady gentle air pressure. This is way out of realm of tubes so any advice is much apperciated.:bangHead:

[frillcappa]

well this might help a little, heat everywhere except for where you are tagging, that way it pulls what you want to, and not just where you tag at. other than that, i dont know much about making a zong

[DieselPower]

----Here it is----
(at least how I know)

So Idk with the lathe, but it should be similar. So I bridge the tube, NICE STRONG bridge, then heat up the section you want to zong out. Heat the whole circumference of that section and keep heating till it condenses and let it condense to give the amount of glass you'll need.

Then when you have it the right amount of glass and you have it down to the size you want, let it start sagging and let gravity take a hold. As soon as gravity takes over, stick it with a decent sized rod based on the size of your tube. By this time it should have started cooling so blow kind of hard, just depends on the temp of the glass. while your blowing you want to be pulling it. If you do it fast it doesn't take a lot but you have to get the timing right between your breathing and your pull.

[Forche]

You don't have to tag it at all. You just rage a 4-5 inch section really hot and stop the lathe. Then you puff and push your tail stock in..if it starts to drop too fast hit it with oxygen. It seems crazy the first couple times but they look really nie this way.

[kage]

You don't have to tag it at all. You just rage a 4-5 inch section really hot and stop the lathe. Then you puff and push your tail stock in..if it starts to drop too fast hit it with oxygen. It seems crazy the first couple times but they look really nie this way.

yes. exactly this way. another thing you can do is crank the lathe full speed for about 5-10 seconds after you stop it for the droop. it swings it out to the fullest, then cools it kind of in the same move.

[Deez]

^ that sounds fun.

[SYNlatheman]

Sweet thanks guys ill give it a try

[Riley]

forche's got it. i would just add that zong drops are best done with a cradle burner. for those using a bench torch on the lathe you will find that you get an uneven heat, where the backside opposite your bench burner flame is cooler, causing asymmetry in the drop.

as well as the stop and drop with the lathe, cranking the tailstock over, you can leave the cradle on but with a smaller sharper flame, this will encourage the very tip of the drop to become sharper and more pronounced. practice this also while using the blowhose to get the shaping to where you like it.

last thing, is that doing the zong bend can cause stress in a few places after its all cranked over and cooled. its a good idea to take your hand torch and polish this out.

if you take a look at the current zong production, you may also notice that they are using a paddle to create the flat angle from the tube to the edge of the point. if you take a look at one in a shop you can see that paddling marks that weren't polished out.

and on a side note i heard that the zong name was recently taken by another company who reinstated their trademark after it ran out on the original company. i am not going to name names but it sounded pretty shady.