1. LOL

2. Develop good habits early on. What they're saying is true, and I kind of make a joke out of it when I give lessons. I tell students they will get cut, and they will get burned. That's lesson one and lesson two, in no particular order. However, I also try to work with my students to have them always keep the hot end of whatever they were just using facing towards the wall. Setting something down in the wrong direction and then picking it back up again is one way to get burned, over and over again. Keep an eye out for the jagged edges of pulled points to avoid those painful lip cuts. Also staying organized is important, which can be difficult I know when you're trying new things, and concentrating on everything at once, and you're just all over the place, but if you know where things are, you're less likely to burn or cut yourself in a mad scramble to find something. I am as hypocritical as it gets on this one, my desk is shamefully messy, I haven't cleaned it in months, but...., I know where everything is, I keep my tools all right where I know how to get to them without even thinking about it. My desk just has a stupid amount of scraps and waste glass on it. Also frit jars freaking everywhere, I really have to do something about that.

3. Lessons for me start with doing prep first and foremost. I teach people from the ground up starting with scoring and breaking, pulling points, pulling color into stringers, and coating color. From there it's a simple spoon with just silver fuming and the bowl dipped in frit. Then it's a similar bowl with color trailed on the bowl and a maria. After that, I'll have them make a piece with a wrap and rake on the bowl, a maria, that is then bent into a sherlock shape. Then it's back to spoons again with a fully worked rap and rake all the way down to the mouth piece. I'll begin to encourage some slight twisting of the glass as the shaft is melted down. After that, to get them more accustomed to working with the glass, and learning about what it will do if you do this, that, and the other thing, I'll teach a doughnut, a fish, and a mushroom shaped pipe. From there, the student should have enough experience to start in on some of the more advanced things, and I let them chose which direction they want to go. Inside outs, welding and bubbler making, reversals, sculpting, etc... I would recommend following a similar order. Each thing always building off of the last, until you know so many things, you can't compile them all in one piece any more, at which point, you've got a product line. Good luck.

4. I can't tell if that's boro or soft glass. From what I've seen, boro rods are shorter, soft glass rods longer, but that's not an absolute rule. I know that soft glass will slump a lot at the temperature boro anneals at, so if it survives 1100 in the kiln, for say 10 minutes or so, and doesn't melt together and stuff, it's probably boro. If it melts together, you've just wasted some soft glass. It's all I can think of, perhaps someone else already left better advice.

5. Can't help you here, I just go to Glasscraft because I frequently find myself in that neighborhood anyways. I do very little shopping around.

6. Yeah, that's a discussion for technical talkers. I'm not gonna touch it. I will say this though, been at it 14 years, 13 of those full time, and I have no idea what that even is. I'm still alive, knock on wood.

7. I use a lot of different sizes. From most used to least used, throughout the years, considering spoons above all other things, I'd say 25mm, 19mm, 31mm, and then the occasional 15mm in the very beginning for lollies and stuff. I don't even teach those anymore though. You're gonna need some 8mm and 3mm rods just to get started.