Spinning Glass For Waves in 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. Now, I’m going to heat up the top 2 thirds of this piece, and we’ll spin it open. Okay, shut me in just on the right please. Now, I’m heating fairly deeply because I want the whole piece to sort of spin open. The tricky thing about this is that I’m actually going to spin the piece open so large that it won’t be able to fit in back in the glory hole. So, this is the last time I get to heat up the piece. In a couple of seconds, I’m going to have Fern open that. Go ahead and open it please. Now, I want to stay here at the edge of the glory hole as long as I possibly can, turning as slowly as I can until the piece starts to collapse, which it’s just about doing. See how it’s starting to collapse in there? It’s starting to collapse. As is collapses, I hold it down and you spin it. If you stop spinning, you get these waves."