August 29th 2013: Blowing Glass for the 2nd Time in Norwood

Today, I left work a little early to have a second try at glass blowing at the Luke Adams Glass Studios in the town of Norwood. As I was a little early, I decided to grab a quick bite at the Ever So Humble Pie Company nearby in the town of Walpole, thinking it was a typical bakery, but it turned out to be a factory manufacturing frozen fruit pies, ready made for the oven. Thankfully, they still had ready made scones, so I decided to go with the Blueberry Almond Scone, which actually wasn't too bad.

Back at the studio, I decided to go with a pumpkin for my first piece. Like the paperweight, the first few steps involve getting glass out of the furnace, dipping it in the colored sands, then melting the sands into the glass.

 After that, another layer of glass is placed on top, and then a first bubble is blown into the open end of the glass.

After a little more heating, the molten glass is then placed into a mold to shape the pumpkin, whereupon it is blown into again to fit the mold.

From here, the piece is heated and blow into a few times to enlarge the pumpkin into its circular shape.

After the pumpkin finally reaches the desired size, it is cut cut off from the main stem,

whereupon the top is fired with a blowtorch to get ready for attachment to the stem.

The stem then comes in molten after having been dyed, then shaped by a smaller mold,

and after attachment to the pumpkin, the molten stem is quickly stretched and then twisted to shape the curly stem.

The end of the stem is then fired to smooth it and remove jagged edges after the cut.

From here, the entire piece has to be placed in the cooling ovens to prevent the piece from shattering due to cooling too fast.

After my pumpkin was done, it was time for my classmates for the day to make their paperweights. I learned that to make bubbles in the piece, all you need to do is poke holes into the inner layer of glass.

One can also flatten the piece using a metal spatula.

My next piece was a scalloped bowl. The first few steps are the same as the pumpkin, except no molds are used, although if one is used, a jello shaped bowl is the end product.

The blowing of the pipe to shape the bowl is the same as well.

When the bowl is sufficiently shaped, it is time to flatten the base,

and after warming it up a last time to prepare it for the transfer, which involves using another tube with molten glass at its tip and sticking it to the flattened side of the bowl,

then breaking off the original connection with the blow tube.

After successfully transferring the bowl from one tube to another, it is time to widen the hole on the round side of the bowl, first heating the bowl up before using the jacks to widen the hole

What happens next goes pretty fast. Once the widening is sufficient enough, after heating it for a bit,

the entire bowl opens up into a plate,

whereupon it has to be spun extremely quickly to prevent the plate from collapsing, before turning the rod upside down and allowing the plate to collapse into the scalloped bowl in a somewhat controlled way.

After the shaping of the bowl is done, it is then time to break it off the rod

and smoothen the base to complete the bowl, which has to be cooled slowly till the next day like the pumpkin.

For the footed bowl, instead of transferring the bowl from one tube to another, the flattened side is actually pushed inside more to form the inside of the bowl.

After breaking off the bowl, it is then set on a circular base of molten glass to complete the footed bowl.

Finally, it was time to head to Boston after being done with glassblowing. I hadn't had anything to eat, so I decided to use my Groupon at Barrio Cantina, a pretty upscale Mexican restaurant in the Fenway area.

For food, I decided to get the Spicy Wings (with lime cilantro),

the Spicy Shrimp Street Tacos (with avocado and bacon),

and the Roasted Poblano Peppers (stuffed with chorizo and Mexican cheese, served with rice and a tomato-chile sauce).

All the dishes were pretty good, especially the tacos which were finger licking good. A pretty good end to a pretty fun night of glass blowing I guess.