OOPS
Sometimes bad things happen to nice glass. Here are some
horror-show images!
These are pictures of the second really round marble I
ever made. You can see that it was quite round and had
a nice finish on it, but that didn't last long :-)
The marble "exploded" while in the kiln. According to Marble
Master Drew Fritts, I did just about every dumb thing a marble
newbie always does (though he was too nice to put it that way):
- Didn't have the kiln hot enough
- Left the marble in the graphite mold to knock the last punty off
- Held the marble in the mold when melting the punty scar off
- Kept holding the marble in the mold while letting the glow fade
- Threw it hastily in the kiln
In other words, OOPS. Hurts to look at, doesn't it? That marble
would have been rather pretty if it had lived. It had a sparkly
"boiled dichro" core, a misty silver effect; and over that was
a layer of latticino decoration. In the heart of the core and
swirling out to one side rather untidily was a chunk of blue
aventurine that I just threw in there for grins. It would really
have been rather nice if it hadn't gone "snap, crackle, pop,
Glass Krispies!"
de@daclarke.org
De Clarke
UCO/Lick Observatory
University of California
Santa Cruz, CA 95064