Just got home last night and today I’ve been unpacking my newest toys…er, tools and glass…I’m so stoked!

The people at the airline check-in counter couldn’t believe a small roll-on cabin-size bag could weigh 50 pounds, but this, ladies and gentlemen, is how you do it!

exciting new colors

Look at all these colors…most of them are limited edition, straight from the Bullseye factory in Portland Oregon. And I lucked out and got the last few rods of a discontinued color, one of my absolute favorite colors: fuchsia. Whoohooo! I’m all atwitter!

But poor ole White Opaque doesn’t like to travel. It started out as 36 full rods. I now have 4 full rods and a whole bunch of shorts. Oh dear.

Still, not too bad, considering how much glass I was hauling, and how far it had to go.  =)

Looking forward to getting on the torch and playing with all these new shades!

Hot Rods!
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4 thoughts on “Hot Rods!

  • Avatar
    March 2, 2015 at 8:44 pm
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    yay! welcome home! have fun with all of the new toys! also, a question. how long or how much can 1 rod of glass last you? im curious.

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  • Jenefer
    March 3, 2015 at 12:26 pm
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    Hi Jason

    It depends how large the final piece is, and how many other colors are being used to create the whole mass. There are also variables like the thickness of the rod (thicker is more mass, so more pieces can be made with it), and some rods are ‘shocky’ which means they ping off various sized bits when the rod is introduced to the flame, so some colors have a lot of wastage due to their shockiness. From the photo above I imagine you can tell that the opaque white is a shocky color.

    An interesting aside, now that I’ve mentioned pings…every burn I’ve gotten lampworking (except one*) has been due to pings of glass. I’m grateful for that, because the glass that’s pinged off isn’t yet up to melting temperature (1400-1800 degrees Fahrenheit—and the hotter the glass gets, the drippier it gets). But the pings are certainly hot enough to blister and scar.

    But I digress. As a general rule I would say an “average” marker uses 4 or 5 colors, and I use between 25-50% of a color to make the piece, but of course my designs vary greatly.

    *The other burn was from grabbing some steel tweezers, which I’d used a moment before to shape the glass, and were still blisteringly hot. I got two parallel burns across my palm…do not ask me why I was even picking up tweezers with my whole hand…all I can say is I was inexperienced. It was an early lesson which taught me (quite memorably) to place hot tools in a specific part of my work area with the hot parts well away from any other tools/rods I might be using.

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  • Avatar
    March 5, 2015 at 12:10 am
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    loverly fuschia is my favorite, or maybe majenta. beautiful stuff beautiful girl. loves mum

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  • Jenefer
    March 5, 2015 at 12:30 pm
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    awwww, Mom! You found me =) I sense something fuschia/magenta in your future!!!

    Reply

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