Steph

My subtraction skills aren't what they used to be, but if I'm doing it right, it's 1.4 one-hundredths of an inch out of round. From .696" up to .710" I don't think I would have called that out of round. I'm not sure I could have detected it with my caliper. Well, that tiny technicality is all I have to contribute. I'll duck out now.

Ooooooooh

Cool. I didn't know about the fish hatchery thing. And the currency marbles? I'd like to hear more about those! By the way, thanks a bunch for making me go search for your article. LOL :-) I think I found it ... but you made me dig! Well, it was fun searching. And as it happens, I ended up with more than one fish hatchery reference. and one of those references was very very interesting ... because it had a lot of errors. I'll be asking some questions about that one in another thread!

"Ball bearings for World War II bomber gun turrets. Glass marbles were lighter than steel ones, needed no lubrication and allowed planes to carry heavier bomb loads." (quoted from here)

What would you call the most "interesting" handmade? I leave it to you to define interesting. Or you could substitute any other word, such as "favorite", "valuable", "rare", .... whatever. yeah, yeah, I'm hoping for some eye candy LOL, but also it's fun to hear people talk about handmades. I just learned yesterday how to count panels. Or I think I did. I have a long way to go!

Dave, I'd call yours a snottie too. I think they should qualify as "snotties" if they were from the right era ... maybe sometime preWWII ... and had the right "look" in the eyes of the kids. No? update: yes! At least maybe! Veiny and boogery might be all that was needed. :icon_lmao: The kids even called marbles snotties before Christensen came along. Now I wanna see one of the early snotties! lol

I'm starting a loose conglomeration of references. As of now it's a loose conglomeration. Maybe someday it will take on some order. But I'd hate anyone else who might find the links useful to have to wait until I can figure out what all of their ramifications are. Please feel free to add links or comments. Whenever it strikes your fancy. (It'll probably go over to the study hall but I wanted to check here to see if there's any interest.) Here's one I think I've heard a little about, read a little about at some point in the past, want to read more about. I think it may have pivotal in the history of marble making. (edit: or at least it might have leads to pivotal stuff??) HAZEL-ATLAS GLASS CO. V HARTFORD-EMPIRE CO., 322 U. S. 238 (1944) http://supreme.justia.com/us/322/238/case.html Another great resource is the U.S. Patent Office. For instance today I was over at their site looking at Patent #1,828,216. The Barker gob feeder patent, which I think is the one for Akro's corkscrew machine. Or something like that. (hey, it's mechanical. I always feel shaky about mechanical things.) Actually, this is what got me googling for Hartford-Empire, and so it's the reason I found the court case above. But again, I'm not sure how it's all connected. A couple of screenshots from the 14 page patent: (click to enlarge) If you know a patent number, here's a direct link to a page to enter it to pull up the drawings and such. http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/srchnum.htm I don't know if this site has all the patents but it has a lot and I think it may be easier to save the files: http://www.freepatentsonline.com/ Mustn't forget about the Gropper court case Roger found a while ago. Here's that thread: Misleading Naming Of Marbles, (didn't start with eBay)

Here's a plastic bag of Ravenswoods: From FINALLY -- A RAVENSWOOD ARTICLE!!! at MM.

So I think Joe's would be a snottie. Anyone particularly agree or disagree? The primary source of snotties appears to be CAC, but is it the only source? I mean ... kids named it ... they wouldn't worry about who made it. only whether it looked booger-y. . . right? (lol) edit: not that I know who made Joe's, but it does look like it might have been from back in the time when kids might have called their marbles snotties ... yes?

That is GORGEOUS! Sorry I didn't say it earlier. I was mesmerized!

Circa 2000? (click to enlarge) (source unknown)

I still don't know if yours is an official type snottie, Joe, but it's one of the coolest contenders I've ever seen. No, Bo, it's not the fizz that makes it snottie. They wouldn't be cat's eyes. It's a very old term. From the 1920's? Before cat's eyes anyway. Pretty sure the "veined" part of the glossary description refers to swirl ribbons, as opposed to cat's eye vanes. I think of deveining shrimp when I imagine the veined part here. altogether gross anyway you cut it! lol

LOL Thanks Bo!!! :icon_lmao:

Looking for nominations for world's best snottie! LOL From the Glossary of Marble Players' Terms: " SNOTTIE: noun. Familiar form of snot agate" " AGATE, SNOT: noun. An agate with a veined and clouded interior; considered very superior" The more realistic and disgusting they look the better, sounds like! (but pretty snotties may enter too. ;-) Um, I think this one deserves a Bart icon :Cartoon_177: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . snotty

Way cool Derrick. Yes, marblemiser ... it would be neat to see your pump balls. :-) The list is getting quite long. Anyone mention applicators yet, like for roll-on perfume ... And ballot balls. Not industrial, but not play exactly.

Guess what! According to one of their ads, M.F. Christensen made THE BEST GLASS BALLS FOR PUMP VALVES When I noticed that you said yours look hand gathered I immediately thought of MFC, but I discounted that because I'd just read the Cohill book and "pump valve" wasn't ringing a bell. But sure enough, there it is. VERY :cool sign: ! Btw, if furniture casters are hand-gathered, they're MFC's too. (or should I say "are most likely MFC too"? ... I'll doublecheck the text on that. There's no index so it may take me a bit to find it.) late update: akro advertising in 1929 claimed they made them too. (pump balls and furniture casters both) still am not sure about the hand-gathered reference. :-)

I'll have to! Thanks for the lead! Valves are a mechanical notion I have a bit of a mental block over. :-) Hmmm ... here's a patent from 1854 for a pump ball valve. I think this one is metal. The ball valve is labelled F in the figure. (there are large size pix of the whole thing at the patent office ... the small ones were the only ones I could do a screen capture with.) That's probably as far as my research is going to get today ...

Thanks! Love 'em!

If you could only save one of your ceramic marbles, which one would you choose? lol No seriously ... anyone have any nice ceramics they'd like to show off. With all the scares about the fake chinas and modern bennies, it would be nice to celebrate some "real" ones. edit: actually, what I wanted to ask about was Pennsylvania Dutch china marbles but in case they were too rare I decided to broaden the question. Anyone here even have one of those, picture or no picture?

Here's one recipe for fried marbles. There are other ways to do it. The 1963 box this "recipe" is from. (source)

KC Marble Crazy 2008!!!!! (videos of the marble show!)

Is that the marble at the bottom of the spout? http://jaypaull.com/gallery2embedded.php?g2_itemId=83&

What is a back-flow preventer? Is that a type of valve? ... that's the keyword I was searching on yesterday when I found the marble guns. I felt sure I'd heard of marbles used as valves somewhere. But as I only have a vague idea of what a valve is ... well, ... I haven't been able to target my search very well. lol

The story I read refers to a time before they were easily made locally. Well, the first story I read mentions it vaguely, but then I looked for confirmation and landed at an Akronmarbles.com page about Sam Dyke's patents. (here) Here's the quote at the head of that page:

just learned a new one for me ... hope I have it right: clay marbles used for ballast, i.e. to steady ships, on the way from Germany to America, where then they would be sold as toys making their transport cost little or nothing