Torch Demo of a Shooter Marble by Bill Grout at Aspen Hot Glass using GTT Lynx and Red Max

Torch demo by Bill Grout making a Shooter Marble out of borosilicate glass in our Aspen Hot Glass shop located in the Bitterroot Valley of Montana. My wife Rae Grout and I sell online through our Etsy store. https://www.etsy.com/shop/aspenhotglass
And more information about us can be found on our web site.http://www.aspenhotglass.com/

Music credits go out to:

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The shooter marble in this video turned out to be 1.2” in diameter and is a basic ribbon twist style. Most common shooters in my collection are 1” for children, but I have some as large as 1.3”. In reality my customers are unlikely to play for real with these marbles though I think that is unfortunate. Rather than worry about damaging a new marble, I find the character of a well used marble so much more full of life and memories. This is in contrast to the Art Glass marbles I make which are not intended for play but for collecting and careful handling.

Video timeline notes for those interested:
01:30 Forming the blank to build on. This will be one half of the clear glass.
01:40 Fuming silver onto the clear base.
01:50 Adding some clear lines to trap the silver fume.
02:00 Building the color core layer. The first lines will be seen on the back side and the last lines will show on the front of the ribbon. Silver Strike 5 and Cherry Red are used here.
03:00 Building up the clear glass to encase the core layer and form the other half of the ribbon structure. This is how color gets inside of glass. It’s all done in layers.
04:22 The first handle is sealed to begin the heat soak and twist.
04:34 A second smaller rod is sealed on the opposite side to give better control and begin tapering the ends, or “terminations”.
05:35 Pulling out the glass with tweezers to clean up the first termination.
05:55 First use of the “marble mold”. This helps to form the round shape but does not mold it into shape like molding plastic parts exactly!
06:30 Clean up second termination with tweezers.
06:50 First stage of getting actually round.
07:10 Using just the rim of a slightly smaller hole in the marble mold is the key to a round marble. Lots of rotation at differing angles.
07:30 Transfering the punty from end to end allows one half at a time to be shaped.
07:55 Using lots of heat for a short time allows the surface to “level” while a relatively cool and solid core keeps the overall shape. Too much heat now will distort the overall roundness.
08:10 Final punty transfer.
09:20 Chill punty and crack off. This one was a more solid of a connection than desirable. The final punty is a “Cold Seal”. Some glass workers prefer a cold seal at each transfer, buy I do not. Chasing the random punty failure (hot marble rolling around on the floor) is something I prefer to avoid. Been there done that!
09:30 Final fire polish of the punty mark. Some leftover mark is just fine in my opinion as long as it is fire polished. It is a reminder that this has been hand crafted and not machine made.
Not shown but most important is getting the ‘hot off the torch’ piece into the kiln idling at 900f. It will then go through an annealing cycle at the end of the day and will be ready for inspection the following morning.