There many different types of artistic glass works and many different things you can do with them.  Here I’ll give you a little insight into what I do and how my products are created.

I started out with one type of “hot glass” and am currently also using what’s called “soft glass” or soda-lime glass.  To generate the necessary heat to blow the glass, I work with a torch (of which there are many sizes and kinds).   For most of my work I prefer to use a Carlisle Hellcat  torch, which has two flames, an inner flame for smaller work and an outer flame that makes a bigger, hotter flame, which is required for larger projects.

Using the torch, I melt narrow rods of glass with the inner flame.  When making glass beads, this molten glass is wound around a stainless steel rod called a ‘mandrel.’   Where the stainless steel rod was becomes the hole in the bead.  Once I have the main color on the rod I can decorate it, push it, poke it and manipulate it in many different ways to create the type of bead I am making.   There are a variety of different tools I use to manipulate the glass during the creation of my beads.

During the last couple of years, I’ve been venturing into what is known as “hard glass” or “borosilicate” glass.  I use the same type of torch but use more of it’s outer flames along with the inner flames, which produces a much hotter flame, which is required to soften the hard glass.

Most of what I do with “boro” glass is called “off mandrel”, meaning it’s made on the end of a rod of glass and never put on a mandrel.  Examples of off mandrel art work I create are things like marbles, pendants and sculptures.

After I have completed shaping the glass products I’ve made (regardless of the type of glass used),  they are then put in a preheated kiln and “annealed”.   This step is required due to the fact that when the glass becomes molten, the molecules within are all “shaken up” and since the glass is moved around, poked and prodded, this step allows it to stabilize once again. 

When the glass is taken out of the flame, the outside cools quickly but the inside cools slower.  Glass shrinks as it cools so by putting it into a kiln, it is kept very hot for a period of time to let the glass calm down and then slowly allowed to cool.  This relieves the stress and allows the bead to last for a long period of time.  Always make sure when you are buying handcrafted glass beads that they have been kiln annealed.  Often glass beads from other countries are mass produced and, while they are pretty, they are not annealed and tend to crack or break.

The other type of glass I have recently started working with is called “warm glass” or “kiln formed”.  This requires a much larger kiln than the bead annealing kilns, and involves working with different types of fused or slumped glass.   These techniques are usually used in creating more decorative pieces such as plates, bowls, wall hangings, etc. 

But this process can also be used for a different type of jewelry I create, where the pieces are fused together in a kiln instead of a flame.  For this type of glass work, I start with flat pieces of glass or decorations (thin pieces called stringer or crushed glass in different sizes call frit or powder) which can be added before firing.  These pieces are placed in a room temperature kiln and brought up to a certain temperature (~1300 - 1500°), then left there for a period to “soak” and then brought back to room temperature again. 

After the first “firing” you have a flat, decorated pieced of glass.  You typically then go through one or more additional firings (often in a mold to shape it into a plate or a bowl), in order to achieve the desired result.