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THE GENTLE ART |
BY F. GREGORY HARTSWICK
| Remedies for our manifold ills; the refreshment that our infant lips craved; coolness in time of heat; yes--even tho July 1st has come and gone--drafts to assuage our thirst; the divers stays and supports of our declining years--all these things come in bottles. From the time of its purchase to the moment of its consignment to the barrel in the cellar or the rapacious wagon of the rag-and-bone man the bottle plays a vital part in our lives. And as with most inconspicuous necessities, but little is known of its history. We assume vaguely that it is blown--ever since we saw the Bohemian Glass Blowers at the World's Fair we have known that glass is blown into whatever shape fancy may dictate--but that is as far as our knowledge of its manufacture extends. As a matter of fact the production of bottles in bulk is one of the most important features of the glass industry of this country today. The manufacture of window glass fades into insignficance before the hugeness of the bottle-making business; and even the advent of prohibition, while it lessens materially the demand for glass containers of liquids, does not do so in such degree as to warrant very active uneasiness on the part of the proprietors of bottle factories. The process of manufacture of the humble bottle is a surprizingly involved one. It includes the transportation and preparation of raw material, the reduction of the material to a proper state of workability, and the shaping of the material according to design, before the bottle is ready to go forth on its mission. | Information Cash Machine lets you "Create Your Own MoneyMaking Info Products" Combining professional training from product creation experts with special, easy to use software that allows even a complete beginner to create their own ebook, this unique package will get you started in the lucrative info product market. Click here for full details The Article Plus Toolkit is "The Easy Way To Build Your Own Article Content Sites" This easy to use software will automatically turn articles into complete web pages and help you generate revenues using Google Adsense. Click here for full details |
| The basic material of which all glass is made is, of course, sand. Not the brown sand of the river-bed, the well remembered "sandy bottom" of the swimmin' hole of our childhood, but the finest of white sand from the prehistoric ocean-beds of our country. This sand is brought to the factory and there mixed by experts with coloring matter and a flux to aid the melting. On the tint of the finished product depends the sort of coloring agent used. For clear white glass, called flint glass, no color is added. The mixing of a copper salt with the sand gives a greenish tinge to the glass; amber glass is obtained by the addition of an iron compound; and a little cobalt in the mixture gives the finished bottle the clear blue tone that used to greet the waking eye as it searched the room for something to allay that morning's morning feeling. The flux used is old glass--bits of shattered bottles, scraps from the floor of the factory. This broken glass is called "cullet," and is carefully swept into piles and kept in bins for use in the furnaces. The sand, coloring matter, and cullet, when mixed in the proper proportions, form what is called in bottle-makers' talk the "batch" or "dope." This batch is put into a specially constructed furnace--a brick box about thirty feet long by fifteen wide, and seven feet high at the crown of the arched roof. This furnace is made of the best refractory blocks to withstand the fierce heat necessary to bring the batch to a molten state. The heat is supplied by various fuels--producer-gas is the most common, tho oil is sometimes used. The gas is forced into the furnace and mixed with air at its inception; when the mixture is ignited the flame rolls down across the batch, and the burnt gases pass out of the furnace on the other side. The gases at their exit pass thru a brick grating or "checkerboard," which takes up much of the heat; about every half hour, by an arrangement of valves, the inlet of the gas becomes the outlet, and vice versa, so that the heat taken up by the checkerboard is used instead of being dissipated, and as little of the heat of combustion is lost as is possible. The batch is put into the furnace from the rear; as it liquefies it flows to the front, where it is drawn off thru small openings and blown into shape. The temperature in the furnace averages about 2100 degrees Fahrenheit; it is lowest at the rear, where the batch is fed in, and graduates to its highest point just behind the openings thru which the glass is drawn off. This temperature is measured by special instruments called thermal couples--two metals joined and placed in the heat of the flame. The heat sets up an electric current in the joined metals, and this current is read on a galvanometer graduated to read degrees Fahrenheit instead of volts, so that the temperature may be read direct. All furnaces for the melting of sand for glass are essentially the same in construction and principle. The radical differences in bottle manufacturing appear in the methods used in drawing off the glass and blowing it into shape. Glass is blown by three methods: hand-blowing, semi-automatic blowing, and automatic blowing. The first used was the hand method, and tho the introduction of machines is rapidly making the old way a back number, there are still factories where the old-time glass blower reigns supreme. One of the great centers of the bottle industry in the United States is down in the southern end of New Jersey. Good sand is dug there--New Jersey was part of the bed of the Atlantic before it literally rose to its present state status--and naturally the factories cluster about the source of supply of material. Within a radius of thirty miles the investigator may see bottles turned out by all three methods. The hand-blowing, while it is the slowest and most expensive means of making bottles, is by far the most picturesque. Imagine a long, low, dark building--dark as far as daylight is concerned, but weirdly lit by orange and scarlet flashes from the great furnaces that crouch in its shelter. At the front of each of these squatting monsters, men, silhouetted against the fierce glow from the doors, move about like puppets on wires--any noise they may make is drowned in the mastering roar of the fire. A worker thrusts a long blowpipe (in glassworkers' terminology a wand) into the molten mass in the furnace and twirls it rapidly. The end of the wand, armed with a ball of refractory clay, collects a ball of semi-liquid glass; the worker must estimate the amount of glass to be withdrawn for the particular size of the bottle that is to be made. This ball of glowing material is withdrawn from the furnace; the worker rolls it on a sloping moldboard, shaping it to a cylinder, and passes the wand to the blower who is standing ready to receive it. The blower drops the cylinder of glass into a mold, which is held open for its reception by yet another man; the mold snaps shut; the blower applies his mouth to the end of the blowpipe; a quick puff, accompanied by the drawing away of the wand, blows the glass to shape in the mold and leaves a thin bubble of glass protruding above. The mold is opened; the shaped bottle, still faintly glowing, is withdrawn with a pair of asbestos-lined pincers, and passed to a man who chips off the bubble on a rough strip of steel, after which he gives the bottle to one who sits guarding a tiny furnace in which oil sprayed under pressure roars and flares. The rough neck of the bottle goes into the flame; the raw edges left when the bubble was chipped off are smoothed away by the heat; the neck undergoes a final polishing and shaping twirl in the jaws of a steel instrument, and the bottle is laid on a little shelf to be carried away. It is shaped, but not finished. The glass must not be cooled too quickly, lest it be brittle. It must be annealed--cooled slowly--in order to withstand the rough usage to which it is to be subjected. The annealing process takes place in a long, brick tunnel, heated at one end, and gradually cooling to atmospheric temperature at the other. The bottles are placed on a moving platform, which slowly carries them from the heated end to the cool end. The process takes about thirty hours. At the cool end of the annealing furnace the bottle is met by the packers and is made ready for shipment. These annealing furnaces are called "lehrs" or "leers"--either spelling is correct--and the most searching inquiry failed to discover the reason for the name. They have always been called that, and probably always will be. | Sherlock Holmes For Your Desktop! What does the world know about you? Ah ha, type your own name in and find out in a matter of minutes. This software can also be used to search the thousands of sources of public records to find dead-beat dads, check the criminal history of employees -- and more! With the price of gas zooming it makes more sense than ever to buy your business cards from us. You can design your own right online and we deliver right to your door. You could save a fortune on all your printing needs. 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In the hand-blowing process six men are needed to make one bottle. There must be a gatherer to draw the glass from the furnace; a blower; a man to handle the mold; a man to chip off the bubble left by the blower; a shaper to finish the neck of the bottle; and a carrier-off to take the completed bottles to the lehr. Usually the gatherer is also the blower, in which case two men are used, one blowing while the other gathers for his turn; but on one platform I saw the somewhat unusual sight of one man doing all the blowing while another gathered for him. The pair used two wands, so that their production was the same as tho two men were gathering and blowing. This particular blower was making quart bottles, and he was well qualified for the job. He weighed, at a conservative estimate, two hundred and fifty pounds, and when he blew something had to happen. I arrived at his place of labor just as the shifts were being changed--a glass-furnace is worked continuously, in three eight-hour shifts--and as the little whistle blew to announce the end of his day's toil the giant grabbed the last wand, dropped it into the waiting mold, and blew a mighty blast. A bubble of glass sprang from the mouth of the mold, swelled to two feet in diameter, and burst with a bang, filling the air with shimmering flakes of glass, light enough to be wafted like motes. When the shining shower had settled and I had opened my eyes--it would not be pleasant to get an eyeful of those beautiful scraps--the huge blower was diminishing in perspective toward his dinner, and the furnace door was, for the moment, without its usual hustling congregation of workers. I made bold to investigate the platform. Close to me glared the mouth of the furnace, with masses of silver threads depending from it like the beard of some fiery gulleted ogre--the strings of glass left by the withdrawal of the wand. The heat three feet away was enough to make sand melt and run like water, but I was not unpleasantly warm. This was because I stood at the focus of three tin pipes, thru which streams of cold air, fan-impelled, beat upon me. Without this cooling agent it would be impossible for men to work so close to the heat of the molten glass. | Leave A Legacy: Be Your Own Banker! Money you are already spending can make you rich, provide a stable income over your whole lifetime, and still leave millions of dollars for your heirs. Women’s financial health. It’s certainly not a new topic. In fact, the concept gains more and more interest each year as millions of baby boom women get closer and closer to retirement. If your mind, body and soul are in desperate need of renewal, where will you turn for help? The automatic response used to be, “I’ll be at the spa for a couple of hours, dear;” but with a day at the spa costing upwards of $400, nowadays many people are turning to another place for peace and tranquility. Life's most important lessons are amazingly varied and can be quite confusing. Even so, they most all have two things in common. First, they usually are not particularly complicated. It certainly can sometimes take a while to get it; but once you do get it, the lesson is normally straight-up and to the point. Second, and here is the rub, the lessons invariably are a "So now you tell me!" kind of thing. Some Smart Ways To Give Money Away Creatively. 20 toys you don't have to buy. home improvement Make your Garden Glow Learn the best strategies of making your yard and garden a source of great satisfaction. The size of the average American yard continues to shrink -- it now stands at only 9,100 square feet -- including the house. At the same time, more and more people are valuing fresh, organically grown produce and wanting to grow their own. With new technology, special varieties and innovative planting systems, you can now grow almost any vegetable, herb or fruit on a deck or in a small corner of your yard or deck -- even producing more than if you planted them in a regular-sized garden. Turn Your Small Yard into a Big Garden. If you want to add curb appeal to your home in time for selling season, a few simple touches can make a powerful impact in the eyes of potential buyers. Pools that offer plenty of backyard fun while also serving as beautiful and functional extensions of living space are the new rage. With smart innovations in design and maintenance, today’s pools are more attractive than ever. |
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