Glass Polishing

About the title... Well, you see... It's really not about polishing glass. Well, maybe it would be best to start at the beginning...

For Katrina's last birthday, we stopped by the Industrial Art Center in Gulfport, where Owen there, led us on a glass blowing session.

This was the "Gnarley Glass" I had made there (that's what Owen called it). I thought it was pretty cool, but the annealing process didn't work out and the glass had fractured.

Here we are, signing the release forms and trying to decide what colors and what kind of design we wanted.

Here is Brad, Katrina's fiancée, working on a huge, marble-shaped paperweight.

Here is the finished product. It is still hot, which is why the colors look brown and the clear class is kind of yellow.

Here is Conni, Luann's friend doing some glass blowing to create her perfume bottle.

And now it's my turn, working on the Gnarley Glass that was displayed at the beginning. Here we are, necking up the opening of the blown glass to make this into a drinking glass.

Here is the finished product, before being placed in the annealing oven.

Luann is rolling her glass 'pull' in red glass to color the main body of her goblet.

The finished product. And of course, it is still hot, so the color doesn't really come through.

This rolling technique with wet newspaper is done to smooth the hot glass into shape.

Ah, the object of the title of this post... (Remember, Click-On-A-Pic to view a larger version) The "Gnarley Glass" actually cracked very badly so, we broke it apart and put it into a rock tumbler and this is what we came out with. We're not sure what to do with these, but several pieces look like they would make cute little sailboats.

We'll keep you 'posted'...