raynsandy

Im in room 112, stop in.

Where in Bedford? I used to hunt right above Shellsburg.

Shippensbug, just south of Harrisburg here.

I took Duffys advice once, and got wet from taking a long walk off a short pier. Still cant figure that one out. WTG Duffy, thanks.

Ive made complete train layouts with 4 or 5 cars, a couple buildings and an airplane flying through, all in a 2 inch marble. You might want to check out the book, "The Making of sulphides". Let me know if you want a copy I have several at the house still.

Rich, if you dont mind me asking, what's your idea ? If you are going to incorporate them into a new project or piece of art, you might save a lot of time by starting with a new figure and going from there, shaping the glass into what you're looking to achieve. Just a thought. Ray

of all the sulphides that Ive torched, Ive never seen one blow up like he had in that one photo. No ideas. The advantage of melting vs grinding: With melting you will retain more volume and also it will be annealed so you know it should hold up. The other thing with melting is, sometimes you have to tweezer off little white spots on the surface from dirt and crap that got down into the chipped areas. with grinding, you loose more volume and there is no stress relief in the glass, so what ever stress was there, still is. Nice looking marble.

I know I was never able to salvage any figures from broken sulphides. I had one once that would crack in the same exact spot every time I remelted and annealed it, gave up after the 3rd time.

Glad you had fun digging. The cullet you want made into a marble can be done fairly easy. Keep in mind that when you go to shape it up, the pattern you see on outside will get distorted a good bit. There are 2 approaches here, the first already mentioned and the second would be to get someone who polishes and just cut a sphere out of the chunk. Melting will result in a larger sphere with a distorted pattern- one that will be annealed, cutting/grinding/polishing will result in a smaller sphere with the pattern intact however, if the chunk wasnt annealed initially, you might just end up with a handful of pieces. Both methods have proved successful.

Been there done that.

Check out the book Drew Fritts put out, search his name on webcrawler or google and his site will pop up. He covers its all, excellent book.

Havent heard much, just that a number of them got shipped there. Im in the process of building my own machine (on paper and through contracted machinist). It wont be ready for any type of production until later on in 2011, as Im in Afghanistan.

contemporary I would venture to say that whoever made it, melted rods down in the torch. Has that look.

A lot of the machines ended up in Mexico. Mid Atlantic (so i was under the impression) had a couple machines as well that were sold. A few of the machines Jabo had, got sold off to fiberglass industries for making spheres.

http://www.glassnotes.com/WindowPanes.html

Ashes really dont get burned up. I encased some for a friend a couple years ago. The color of the ash is light/almost white. As far as a bee is concerned, if the artist is good and can duplicate a bug out of glass, that can be encased. Paul Stankard does some really cool bees. Organics will be consumed into ash in the high temp of molten glass.

You are all welcome. Im still over here and will be moving from place to place, so I may not get a chance to check in for a while.

Yes it is, it was a special run I had a few years ago. Thanks for asking.

Your quite welcome.

Not home yet, currently sitting near the Iran border. Soon enough though. Family is fine thank you. Fishing? did I hear fishing? sure there can be guided tours, well I know this fellow just north of me who would be more than willing to give a tour, if you could ever reach him while he is out fishing. Oh I have some doozy shop plans. Im chomping at the bit to get on with the program. Wishing I could come out and tell everyone but cant right just yet its the surprise thing !

Hey Everyone, ITs been a long time since Ive been active on the boards. Ive been over in Iraq for over a year now and have been planning on building a bigger and better glass shop, with a "hotel" type of living quarters attached for those who are from out of town and would like to hang out for a weekend. We will probably break ground sometime in July after my vacation. I have a lot of new and original ideas for marbles that will be turning the marble world upside down and will be having everyone asking, "how on earth did he do that?". So on that note, Ill be in touch, have questions feel free to email me: rlaubs at yahoo dot com. Ray Laubs

happy breathday Duffy.

congrats

Dont know for sure, saving up a retirement fund now, still looking to build a bigger/better glass shop so I might be here awhile, might wake up tomorrow and say the heck with it and catch a flight home.

LOL ROTFLOL LOL SMSLOL