Jack Lines: Learn Glass Blowing: Free Online Video Lesson

"Hi! My I’m Jim McKelvey with Third Degree Glass Factory in St. Louis. You can check us out on the web at www.stlglass.com. Today, we’re going to learn about glassblowing for expertvillage.com. To start the jack line. In order to do this, we need a piece that’s nice and hot, but there’s a problem with jacking…and it looks like this. If the piece is very hot then it’s not very stable. It’s wagging around and falling all over the place, and it’s very hard to get an even set of jack lines in something that’s moving so vigorously. Conversely, if the piece is cold you won’t be able to get any jack lines in at all. What I like to teach people is to set a starter jack line in on a warm piece. We’re going to that right now. If you watch a professional glassblower work, they’re not going to do this. They’re just going to put those jack lines in, but they probably have a lot of experience that allows them to do that. If you’re a beginner, you don’t have that experience. You probably want to do the trick that I’m about to show you. Okay, so I get this piece in the glory hole, not too hot. It should be very, very easy to control, but just have a little bit of movement. It’s my judgment as to what I consider easy to control. I think this is relatively east to control for me right now. I don’t have to turn it very fast, so I’m going to sit down at the bench. I’m going to draw that guideline in by lining my eyes up first, and then sliding down the jack and putting just a slight indentation in the bubble. Now, I’m not squeezing very hard, but what I’m trying to do is line everything up. Notice, how I’m sitting at the bench. I’m not sitting like this. A lot of beginners like to sit like this, but over here you can’t see anything, so I angle my body at the bench so that my eyes are lined up with the spot that I’m working on, and then I put those jack right on that spot. If I do that, I will create a slight indentation. So, you can see this very slight indentation right there. That’s all I need to put in the jack lines. This guideline will serve for the next reheat when we’re really going to get it hot."