Open Glass for Glassblowing

"Hi! 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. This is the last part of this. What we’re going to do is we’re going to open it up and spin it out. We’re actually going to make a piece that’s larger than the glory hole itself. The first thing I want to do is inflate the top and get it ready to spin open. Shut me in, please. Let me out in 20 seconds. Okay, thank you. This is a steam cone, and if you use it to block the tip of the piece, it can also be used to sort of inflate it at the same time. This big bubble is sort of uneven, that’s going to be interesting. The lip wrap is sort of uneven, that’ll be sort of interesting. There’s a spiral with dots on it. This is going to be a very busy looking piece when it’s done. It’s going to be done in a couple of seconds here because this is the second to last move. I’m going to even up the heat, make sure everything looks right. On the very last move, what I’m going to do is heat it up just at the tip of the piece, and try to get the top to spin and then collapse. Okay, let me out please. So, this is the last time I get to touch it at the bench, and all I’m doing is insuring that that lip is going to want to open up. That looks pretty good. I’m going to check my punty. My punty looks pretty good."