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Another marble that made me reluctant to give up was this, the largest I have yet made. It was the last one I made right before the Plug Uglies. OK, the swirl is not very good, it's shaky; and the poles are messy. The surface is not perfect, but it is rounder and better than any of its siblings. And then it has that satisfying heft and size. I would have treasured this marble when I was a kid, rough as it is. It was made with Walter Evans' wooden molds, and it was a lot of fun -- but not having a rough graphite mold big enough, I had to (are you sitting down) build the sucker up from 1 inch to 1.25 in by manually encasing it in clear. now you know why the twist is kind of shaky :-)

An interesting feature is the "turbulence" in the center of the marble. That's not on the surface. The waves of distortion you see are actually in the core, and I have no idea why.