Spoon
Description
In lampworking, the term "spoon", most often refers to a type of dry smoking pipe that gets its name as the shape of it roughly resembles an eating spoon.
Instructions
There are many many different techniques for making spoons, and the additions of patterns and colours adds many more elaborate techniques. For the purpose of this description, we will be making a clear spoon. The technique described here is not the only way or correct way, but rather covers the basics.
NOTE - between most of the steps it is important to keep all the parts you are working with warm, by continually flame annealing them. Every so often, crank up a bushy reducing flame and give the parts a bath for a few seconds, otherwise they may crack on you.
1. Take a 12mm tube, this will be your blow tube. Heat appx 1cm of the end of the tube and flare it out using a graphite reamer so that it has a lip/flare of appx 1cm. Set aside.
2. Take 25 to 26mm tube. Slightly taper inwards by about 5mm one end of the tube. Plug the other end of the tube with a stopper (some people use a plug of newspaper), anything to stop the flow of air will do.
3. Holding the 25mm tube in one hand and the 12mm tube in the other hand, bring them both into the flame, with the tapered end of the 25mm tube and the flared end of the 12mm tube being the ends that are in the flame. You need a fairly large flame for this. If your torch does not produce a big enough flame you will need to do a bit of extra back and forth work with each end of the tubes co-sharing time in the flame.
4. Heat up the ends so they are both glowing orange and bring them together while rotating so that they meld into one another forming a weld/seal. Make sure there are not any holes and bring both tubes (now sealed) out of the flame and blow gently into the 12mm tube while gently pushing the 12mm tube into the 25mm tube. This will cause the heated areas to flow into one another and puff out a bit, creating a nice weld and essentially making the two tubes as one. If need be you can bring the weld back into the flame to clean it up.
5. Flame cut the 25mm tube, so that you have a piece of 25mm tube (attached to the 12mm tube) that is appx 4 to 6 inches long, depending on the length you want your spoon to be. Most likely, you will be stretching your spoon out a bit so you can make it a bit shorter if you like.
6. Close off the flame cut end, use a clear rod to pick off any extra globs of glass at the tip and to bring the tip to a nice point, right in the center of the tube.
7. Heat up this end of the 25mm tube to a glowing orange and gently puff so that it rounds out, without puffing out and creating a bubble and so that the glass is evenly distributed on the end, rather than thick is some areas and thinner in others.
8. Heat up the first inch or so of the 25mm tube, this will become your bowl. Heat it up, till it glows orange and just begins to constrict. Remove from the flame and blow gently, yet firmly into the blow tube, causing the bowl to puff out and take shape. Continually rotate while doing this, or the bowl may sag. Keep doing this till it has cooled down and maintains it shape.
8. Create a very narrow flame, the more pinpoint the better and heat up a small spot on the bubble you just created. This spot needs to be somewhere along the apex of the bubble. You want to heat an area appx 2mm around, this will become your bowl hole. First time you do this, just puff a little into the blow tube so the area you just heated puffs out but does not pop, now you have a little nipple on top of your bubble. Then just heat up this little nipple in the flame, leaving the rest of the bubble untouched, and with the nipple in the flame, blow hard and it will pop. If you like, clean up the hole with the tip of a very narrow graphite reamer.
9. Return your flame to normal and heat up the area around the hole you just made. Heat up appx 1cm all the way around it. While you are doing this, have at your read, to the side of your torch, a graphite pad or some sort of non-flammable surface to set the pipe onto and a graphite bowl push.
10. In one fluid motion, remove the pipe from the flame and se it bottom down on to the pad, hold it so it will not move or roll around. With your other hand, take the bowl push and center it over the hole you just made and push down into the area you heated around the hole and push inwards into the bubble on the end of the 25mm tube. Gently push, but keep a firm hand. This will create your bowl. If you mess up,it can be fixed, try heating the bowl area again and retrying the push, if you really mess up the whole thing, it can possibly still be salvaged by simply closing off the hole, heat the entire end up and start over.
11. Cold seal a punty to the bowl, keeping it on axis with the blow tube.
12. Heat up the area behind the bowl and before the blow tube, this will become your stem. Heat this area by continually rotating and going back and forth in the flame so that everything heats up evenly. While you are doing this, watch the tube and you will notice it beginning to constrict, creating thicker walls.
13.When this area is constricted, glowing orange and feels like stiff chewing gum, remove it from the flame and give a gentle pull on either the blow tube or the punty so as to stretch the stem. You probably will only want to stretch it by a few centimeters at most (for a simple straight spoon), it is at this point though that you could also curve it if you wanted, but that is a more difficult skill.
You now want to create the mouthpiece, for which there are several well known methods, I will only describe one here at this time.
14. flame cut off the blow tube, thus closing off the mouth piece. Switch to a very narrow flame and heat up just the center of the mouth piece and not the surrounding area. Poke at this heated up area very narrow (2 to 3mm) clear rod, so that with each poke a little bit of glass comes out of the center of the mouth piece and off onto the rod. Eventually the glass covering the center area will become so thin that it will just pop open, creating a hole (the mouthpiece), you can then clean up and widen this hole using a reamer and if it is too big you can narrow it by rotating it in the flame.
15. Hold your spoon with a pair of tweezers or other tools and flame cut off the punty, or if you cold sealed it, just tap it off. Clean up the scar and put it in the kiln to anneal.
--Meerkat 23:07, January 18, 2007 (EST)
