Comedy hour

[Forge]

Hey all,

I finally got to fire it up last night and actually see and feel in real life what this is all about. So night one i spent 2 hours just flame cutting rod, different gathers(elbow up,down), and learning how to get different flames. Tonight another hour or so learning how to tear from rod and open a small tube by tearing with many failures and a couple successes.

I really want to again thank you all for getting me this point, I could not possibly done it without you. I'm going to just stick with the fundamentals obviously and I'll try my best to post first attempts of the different genres.

Without further a due here is my attempt at a constriction...hence the thread title.

[smolder holder]

Hell yeah man! Keep the fires burnin. Everyone starts right where you are.

[Julian]

My first piece of glass was a glanky mushroom marble. Second, an ice cube with a red line through it and a 1mm loop. Third, a spoon which looked like it was wearing an elf hat.

Looks good so far, keep it up!

[Forge]

Haha,

Thanks man! It's very consuming even after a few hours. I'm hoping with all the current committments i have to get at least 5 hours a week, but i figured this will be a life long deal so I just need to be patient and practice, practice, practice.

Bahaha that's awesome julian!

[Forge]

I love how humbling it is to dig in after looking at all your guys work.

[eb4evr]

Lookin good :) keep at it, that picture looks all too familiar haha

[glassdocnc]

Starting is good. Having a picture of where you started is better.

[Forge]

Thanks all,

You were all right in saying that it is unbelievable addictive. Ways to improve are pretty much consuming me at this point.

[smolder holder]

Thanks all,

You were all right in saying that it is unbelievable addictive. Ways to improve are pretty much consuming me at this point.

And will consume your thoughts forever.

[Forge]

It's almost like when you first pick up a guitar, you hear all the progressions you want to play but your hands just won't let it happen yet.

[IndiePendent]

and will consume your thoughts forever.

fooooooooooooorrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeever!

[Blissful Glass]

I lit up when I came across this thread. I love seeing a enthusiastic beginner, and from the sounds of it eventually ur going to have a good grasp on glass manipulation. My advice would be.. first and foremost proper ventilation, 2nd practice things like different marble tecs. Tube implosion marbles, flower marbles from solid rod, classic mushroom tech. < along in those process u pick up lots of key tricks, like how to properly cold weld so u can tap it off the rod later and not have to flame cut it off. Once u master the basics the scaled up version behaves just the same as the miniature.
the stick crew will gladly help out with questions, normally Jeff Berning is on but if hes not just scroll down to the bottom of the page and see which one of of his friends is live.
www.stickam.com/berningglass

[Julian]

I wish I could watch the Berning stickam too, but for some reason I have this huge problem getting stickam working. For some reason that and embedded SoundCloud widgets never load right, though other Flash stuff is no problem.

[funksizzle]

I'm finding that if you mess up enough, you'll eventually wind up with a themed park style sculpture of some kind. Mistakes are opportunities. That's the learning process is making mistakes. You would never learn without making mistakes. Each time I have tried a mushroom pendant, I wind up with something even cooler and original. Go where others have not. I'm a beginner, learning how to fend for myself in the ring.
When your bead is falling off the mandrel, better think fast.

Now it's ahh, ahhh, ahh. Whoops, now I'll just ahhh ahhh shizznit. Now it's ahh, and eventually you'll wind up with a sculpture.

Great creativity exercise for shapes, challenging your brain, and before blowing to fill your temporal lobe up to think on the spot for possible mishaps.
Doodle shapes, and keep adding around them, spotting new opporunities, adding new designs in a circle, or whatever until you fill up a page which will help give you ideas before you blow. Keep the drawings positive, and this will help you switch it up, your creativity skills that is. Spin it around, and flip it around. It's something to do in between, keep some thoughts flowing instead of letting the lazy mental shortcuts get to your mind.

I think this would be a pretty universal concept among glassblowers.

I should post some of my first pieces, pendants, and stuff. Kindy tricky to remember how some of them were formed, then again focusing and recording what I do afterwards is helping a bit.

Good tip for your short term memory

Let one or 2 tidbits, jokes, information, events, whatever linger without writing them down.
Move on, and try to keep bringing those 2 lingered tidbits back up in your memory, but do not write them down. Do this all throughout your day, and maybe eventually write them down at the end. This will help you stay focused, and be able to remember more when you turn your torch off and write down some stringer recipes, or your steps.

The 1 or 2 let go's are worth it. Also sum up everything into a few words as a condensed keyword sparker to your neural networks. Block, switch some words up.

[Aaron Ellis]

Nice constriction for ur first. Practice even rotation. A good exercise is to take two 8mm or so rods about 14" in length and connect with a 2" long sillicone hose leave a 1/2" of space between the rods and practice rotating in both directions evenly. Eventually it's muscle memory. Hope that all made sence. Good luck.

[Forge]

Thanks all!,

I really appreciate the words of encouragement and tips.

@ Blissful. I've been OCD on the ventilation and saftey in general haha and I'm definitely going to check out that website thanks.

@Funk, thanks for the tips, my mind is shooting a mile a minute on how to improve the few things I've worked on so writing things down will really help keep things organized for sure.

@Stank, That's a great idea. I've taken 2 rods and put a thin strip of duct tape one each, match them up and then start rotating independently to see how off my rotation is. Crazy how things differ when the solid rod turn into 2 completely different rods connected by a molten mass, Your exercise will be perfect to work this.

I'm aiming for hour 4-6 tonight so hopefully I'll pull a color stringer and do a little implosion after I work on tearing and rotation for a while. It kills me to have everything ready to rawk and not have the time to devote to it right now but the hard part is done with all the set up and safety issue so now I just get to focus on the fun part.

Again big thanks

[sertaiz]

dood. play at least 20 hours a week. this is a fulltime hobby which is about the same time as a part time job. if you dont keep at it your fingers will take longer to put things into auto mode. even after a few months of not working i have to work to get back to where i was. but really just have fun for a while and only do things you want to. youll naturally come back to things you didnt figure out so you can put something down at any time and work with something else entirely. you dont have this luxury when you are pushing yourself to create with limits on what, how fast, etc. play

[Forge]

Hey Sertaiz,

best case scenario right now I'll get 6-10 hours a week. Free time is at a premium, but at least I got the hard part over with (setting up) so when things relax I can dive right in. Until then I'll relish the time i get and haunt myself with things to improve on next time i get to fire up.

[Forge]

Finally got my third session behind the flame and here's the result......

Too thick at the mouthpiece, too thin and bowl pushed whacky, forget to reheat bowl portion before I put on a cold seal punty and cracked the back, plus I did not tear enough of the nipple off or blow it out uniformly enough so the back of the bowl is much thicker then the middle. I dub thee "my hooptee"

[sasch74]

I had to pull points of 12mm std tube for 2 weeks at the apprenticeship i attended. Thank God there were no digital cameras at that time lol... But I got hooked in the first 5 min...
Karl Ittigs son Hans-Joachim used to have a piece of paper hanging somewhere when he was demoing which said "Glassblowing is not a hobby!". I agree. But enthusiasm will always be rewarded. You're doing well, flame on!

[Forge]

Thanks man!,

Im completely hooked too, constantly thinking of things to improve on and obviously that means everything including getting the right flames on the torch. I guess the first few times you just want to try and make something but do to the little time i have to spend I really need to buckle down and work on fundementals.

[funksizzle]

Thanks for the tips on practicing the equal spin. I suppose sometimes you do some balancing acts to get both hands down pat, and use your head literally. The doors will open with you head.
I think sometimes, mistakes are supposed to happen, to create new methods, and challenge your original flavor. Yesterday I had my first fish pendant break off punty, and tried repunting it like 7 times each time dropping, sticking a little, dropping and flopping. It was worth the guppy joke eh.

I'm trying to figure out a visualiztion exercise for stringers, and implosions so if anyone has any tips here that would be appreciated.