raynsandy

Actually I dont have a single marble over here. (I did have some but gave them away) Ill be heading home for vacation here in a couple of weeks so I think Ill make a few and throw some wire around them. I wont be using our epoxy to put marbles on the dash, its reserved for putting quarters on the concrete.

Hard to have a center piece when your chowing down a turkey sub in the truck. (by choice cause the line was way to long at lunch time) Ray

I picked up some people at the airport. Well, they were new.

Thanks all. Still in Baghdad. Dont get out much, working 12 a day everyday with no time off except for vacations. Ray

Thats where I disappeared to 7 months ago, IM there to build up my retirement and to put enough green away to build that bigger better glass shop without debt looming over my head. safe as can be. Thanks. Ray

Thanks Fishslayer. Im only have a little less than a week before I fly back to Iraq for another 5 months minimum. Been wanting to get the glass shop fired up but doesnt look like thats going to happen on this round.

....Yeah, I had a great day running the machine with Scott and Ron. The run was very successful with only a .6 % loss out of 750 pounds = 4.5 pounds loss, and most of that was because the one set of rollers was crunching the peewees. Most of the marbles are between 9/16 and 5/8. Mostly 9/16. Thin lines of lutz, some with mica, a lot with aventurine, oxblood, blueblood, guinea look alikes on blue base and burmese base, lemonade ox, pinks/purples, most have depth that allows you to see deep into the marbles like the vintage ones. Over all a great run, a super great day, great friends- good seeing Duffy pop in out of the blue. My meager selection of marbles will make great gifts eventually. Have to get ready to fly back to Iraq- 5 more months to finish up on. Cheers to all. Special thanks to Dave at Jabo.

Most onionskins are that way, either that or real bubbly crappy looking glass. If you look on the outside of a lot of old onions, youll see the glass isnt good crystal. They had good clean crystal back in the day. Its my opinion, marbles were made to use up the unwanted glass at the bottom- cleaning out the pot or right off of the top to use up the not so good stuff. End of canes, end of onion cane can all be found hidden in the cores of either solid cores or oinions.

IVe burnt my fingers at both ends and will say you can only do pin point work with a torch. Ive worked furnace marbles using a torch for some detail, so you could call it a cross breed? eerrr now Ill have everyone hating me.... Ray

Sure thing Al and thank you.

I finally finished the book project and its availible at : http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?_sho...fSearchFamily=0 It may seem a little salty for a paperback spiral bound book, but I used all color photos to help give perception to the contents. Thanks for looking. Ray

You have to preheat them slowly bringing the temperature up from room temp to at least 1100 F. Leave it sit at that temp long enough to ensure the heat has saturated the entire marble. At that point you can punty up to it and put it in the fire, either bench torch or glory hole. The marble is upwards of 2100 F at this point. Reshape it, then anneal it back down to room temp.

check out Stacey Rings water color work. She does some real nice marble pix.

Anyone wanting any polishing done, email me and Ill refer you to this thread...... ps everybody wants to get into the act............

Chips and moons often times turn into a fuzzy white spots on the very surface which can be tweezered off. The advantage to remelting a marble would be to retain the most of its volume to size. wherein say a 1/4 inch chip would require a total of a 1/2 inch be taken from the over all diameter if you were to grind it down uniformally in a machine. With a re melt you would only loose just a little pinch per spot and sometimes not even that. A re melt will work with cracks but you have to consider: 1) why the marble cracked to begin with 2) if someone filled the voids with plastic resins or glue etc.... 3) how much dirt is in the crack (dirt in a crack will show up as a cloudy layer) 4)value of the marble after gambling 25 bucks on it as to whether or not itll turn out to your satisfaction.

itsy bitsy tiny weeny yellow polka dot marble....... uh hmmmm, Super little wee tiny little things uhh?

I cook them sometimes. I dont make any promises. Ive seen marbles that were glued together and when I tried to cook them, it left a black layer of soot right up through the center. Then Ive seen an old sulphide that I cooked 3 times and it kept cracking right in the same spot everytime. WHy? Dont know, never figured that one out. I may or may not take on a marble to re cook. IF I do, Im very slow about getting around to it.

Lernen Sie, um Deutsch zu sprechen. Ray