Right on, great start Brett!
So lemme start and say thank you melting pot! if it wasn't for glassblowing right now, i dunno what the hell i would be doing. without this site i would have probably gave up or never started.
little background my name is Brett im 26, i work full time at a distributor of smoking accessories, wrapping and packing pipes into boxes. around the same time i started working there my friend introduced me to flameworking. he showed me around at a shop he was working at, showed me how to make a spoon, etc. but my friend wasn't super motivated and every time i went to the shop they were out of oxygen or glass or whatever. after driving an hour after a full day at work get there and realize i gotta drive back cuz theres no materials i gave up on that. but in the back of my mind i knew i still wanted to learn.
so fast forward a couple years and lots of car problems... back in april i dropped the coin and got my stuff, a Redmax, a 99ls, some tools etc. i was lucky enough that one of the suppliers for my job sold me most of the equipment and dropped it off saved a gang on shipping. and another supplier came by with a bunch of raw glass.. 2 tubes of 38x4 1 tube of 20ish mm, a 15 ish mm cobalt, some 9mm tube and some pink, yellow, and super boily orange.
so i burned through almost all that free glass and heres where i am... still dont have the kiln setup cuz i dont wanna start an electrical fire. soon enough i will be garagin' and annealin' properly.... everything is flame annealed/bench cooled/about to explode into a million pieces lol.
crappy cell pics i know ill get a real camera next time i promise...
Right on, great start Brett!
so the first pic is almost every pipe i have ever made that i didn't get dirty.
pic 2 are my first two inside out attempts.
pic 3 is my fav 2 clear spoons i've made.
pic 4 is super blurry but they are my fav implosion flower pendants so far.
FU i made cuz i was trying to make a pipe and the whole point exploded starting from where i crappily welded the blowtube so i took a broken piece of the tube flattened it out and wrote FU and encased it haha.
pic 5 i made a ton of these cobalt dabbers, these were some of the cooler ones.
and last pic is a couple funky dabbers i made, the big one seemed really cool in my head but when it came out looked pretty gaudy and dorky w/e, just havin fun in my spare time.
im home sick from work so thought i'de introduce myself finally and show that im not a total poser hahaha.
thank you sir!
welcome dude nicely done!
I dig the fu pendant. Ive got a pipe in my garden that says fuck on it and is riddled with cracks
sometimes when things start to turn, you have to say " no fuck you!" and make it into something else. sometimes its something better
where are you at? you might be able to find someone locally who can help you batch anneal your shit
Don't set yourself on fire
thanks
im in the san fernando valley in the greater Los Angeles area
i realized while i was making the FU pendant i should wrote it backwards like a mirror so the clean side was on the front instead of the folded side but i was happy to make trash into something funny.
Last edited by dplaza; 10-08-2013 at 02:55 PM.
Cool, keep it up! And a camera will come in good time.
~Misha
Brett, glad you are still melting. Keep it up. Thanks for the pics.
Take life with a grain of salt.....a slice of lime, and a shot of tequila
Most orange you get will do that until you learn to work the cads. One ingredient boils at a lower temp than glass melts.
Once you read up on it all the Crayola colors start not boiling .
Lampworking the road that never ends, Until your out of gas!
yah i was surprised how not boily the orange works even in my premix flame just. just set it super hissy and work slow in the back of the flame maybe ill try to use some more of it today.
heres some spoons i made yesterday
heres my first iso frit spoon... not functional i scraped a tiny piece of frit out. i dunno for safety sake i dont think im going to use ISO frit on dry functionals.
hmm i have a couple more pics but it when i try to upload i get a red exclamation point. what does that mean?
im wondering if maybe 38 x 4 is too big for these style of pipes? its super hard for me to condense the pipes without them getting wrinkly or twisting them up as u can see in the marias on the spoons up there. i dont have a L marver so im just condensing everything with gravity. obviously i need to keep practicing but maybe ill get a case of 32 to try next time?
Thanks for checkin out my stuff!
gravity is the way to condense such things. try 25x4. 38x4 is quite large for spoons and such, and wont condense nearly as quickly
don't be discouraged by iso frit. your piece looks pretty good actually, especially for a first.
try to focus on melting in the mouth in a bit more. you can always gather it down and then puff it back out
the inside of the pipe should pretty much be completely smooth.
oh yeah nice work!
Don't set yourself on fire
38x4 is not to big for a spoon. I make iso spoons on 38x4 simax all day. Just keep practicing and the twisting and other problems will fix themselves with practice. I have a L marver but for the condensing part your talking about I don't use the L marver for it, just heat and gravity.
There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive. This ecstasy, this forgetfulness of living, comes to the artist, caught up and out of himself in a sheet of flame ; it comes to the soldier, war mad on a stricken battlefield and refusing quarter. ~ Jack London
Instagram ---- Captain_Glass
thanks trevor! glad to get some feedback.
I made a really nice piece on about a ~2 inch point of the 38x4 last night. ill prolly get another case of it as well as some 25 next time. you're right guys the more i think of it the shapes that i want to make can only be done with gravity. just gotta keep spinning its getting easier, becoming more muscle memory.
im pretty sure a lot of the twisting was from having uncentered puntys/points and trying to heat the tube all in one go. i started letting it sink on itself out of the flame more instead of trying to make the flame do gravitys job.
really appreciate the feedback!
gaaah everytime i try to upload pics of my sherlocks it gives me a red exclamation point!! obv its a coincidence that its only pics of locks but anyway, anybody know what thats all about?
i think ima just try to find somewhere to host my pics online and link them.
Bookmarks