Lampworking a marble.

 Having looked at the formation of my glass bowl 'metamorphosis' project I thought the centre looked a little empty.... this led to wondering whether it needed something in the middle to finish it off - like a marble perhaps.

So, I lit up my lampworking torch, grabbed a rod of glass and got to work.

I usually use what is called 'soft glass' that melts really easily and can drip like honey, this works very well when making beads, but to make a marble I needed a larger mass of glass so decided to use a stiffer glass in a heavier flame.

It takes a little bit of mistake-making to learn how to handle hot glass.  You are working with (or perhaps against) gravity all of the time, so you have to be clever in your manipulation and allow gravity to do most of the work while just tweaking and turning as necessary.

You also need special glasses to filer out that bright orange flame you see in the photo - or you could cause serious damage to your eyes.

To get a beautifully rounded form you need to have a little help in the shape of a marble mold.  You just roll the hot glass in your mold shape and reheat.  If you fail to reheat then you run the risk of the marble simply shattering as it cools down too quickly.

Once you have one side of the marble done, you need to 'punty' it - this means adding a temporary rod to the other side while you reheat and shape the other half of the marble.   If the punty gets too hot and too welded in place, then you have to repeat this process until you are able to just tap it off.  It takes quite a bit of practise to do this bit.

Once the punty is off, you then have the precarious task of heating the punty spot until it has totally melted back into the marble.  This has to be done with complete concentration as that hot little ball can easily roll out of the marble mold, across the table, onto the floor... where it bounces about for a little while as you decide whether to try and catch it or not (DO NOT!!)..... and burns everything in it's path!!

You can tell I have done this a few times, right?

Once the punty mark has been melted in, you can pop the marble in a ready heated kiln.   The kiln is then set to slowly come back down to room temperature over a matter of quite a few hours, to prevent the glass from getting thermal shock and shattering.

Once the kiln has finished its schedule and the marble is cold, you can lift it out and marvel at it!

Marvel at the marble!!   :)