lstmmrbls

having some very unhappy marble consignors the last few auctions may explain the lack of high quality marbles?

Nope, still not supporting them.

Nope, still here, One of those too pretty to part with marbles. (And I have never seen another) yea, I said pretty

Damnit man, hope you get a bit of relief now and again. give me a holler if you wanna talk.

Wish I could have seen it Ron, and don't worry I already have the drywall guy on speed dial(LOL)

According to a few Alley lovers and the offers I have been getting for it this must be Alley

It was hard and steady all day into the night. Many of the streets were small rivers. A few friends in Napa got a little water but nothing serious. They made such a big deal out of it ahead of time everyone took it seriously and were pretty much prepared. The cities had time to make sure all the drains were clean and leaves picked up so everything drained pretty well. I had a camera set up to keep an eye on my drains while I was at work and everything worked great. The biggest pain was getting every leaf picked up ahead of time so the drains wouldn't plug.

Peltier had a much more complicated system. Separate tanks, separate streams, multiple orifices etc etc. When you are looking for a consistent pattern with different colored ribbons or even when it was the same color multiple ribbons , I can see how it could take several men for each set up. Apples to Oranges IMO

Very interesting, Thanks Ron great info but now I want to hit my head on the wall.. Just hard to get the brain to accept that with everything running at the same speed and the size of the stream not changing that an equal amount of glass goes through the shear whether it is a stream piled up to make a swirl or a single stream making a patch type. Brain getting ready to explode. Guess I just need to see it as I just can't get the mind open enough for it to make sense. Unless it is possible things slowed down just a bit when the shear was not alligned perfectly??

I am now in agreement with Mikey and Boyce. Question for Ron, When making marbles with cut lines on them and not altering anything but the shear, were the marbles swirls that showed cutlines or did they come out with straight lines seam to seam.?

No I am back to being all confused again. I just can see no way that a marble that is not hand gathered can have only one cut line. (I am ignoring swirls in this context). And have spent many hours in discussions and we all always ended up pretty much agreeing.

one of the early Miller machines had actual scissor like shears attached right above the rollers so they opened and closed mechanically. Boyce thought the set up was for hand gathered marbles but I and I think Mikey believed it was set up for a gob feeder

OOOPS! got my description a little basackwards, it is called a cup but is actually a round hole in a thick block of steel the stream piles up in then slides over another hole dropping through and getting sheared off in the process. Where the two blocks of steel meet at a hole is called the Shear. So If you eliminate all that, mix the glass in the tank run a thick stream directly through some blade type shears directed to the rollers(funnel) you get one glob with out folding and get a shear mark? This is real hard to explain as I need to point, wave my hands, and make gestures for a proper description. And I am a slow typer

I really hadn't considered the Pelt patent as it seems to mix the glass mechanically then runs it through another orifice before the shearing. It is in a class all it own? But I have decided that mixing in the tank is the main difference for "most" and the reason a shear mark or remnant of one can be found on so many slags. It is a large unfolded stream already mixed up before shearing. Swirls are mixed by folding in the cup after shearing.

I see what looks to be obvious folding(most noticeable in the middle right pic. This keeps me from going anywhere near Akro as a guess.

Vacor was the guess but I have bought many nets and looked at hundreds of pictures and found none that look like these marbles I got a while back. Does anyone have some similar and can put an ID to these??????

Only the left of the 2 is a CAC. non of the others are

After more study I have now come to believe that the main difference between slags and swirls(other than glass quality) is slag glass is mixed or layered together in the pot or tank and swirls glass has the 2 colors coming together in the tank right before the stream leaves the tank.

The base glass on their transparent swirls seems to be more bubbly and not quite as free of the heat looking waves found in lots of transparent glass, Some of the transparent glass used in their Opaque base swirls seems to be closer to slag type glass. Maybe the cost of materials and the methods of production were higher for slags and the cheaper formulary and production methods made the glass appear "less pure" in swirls than that found in slags, Here are some dug swirls from CAC. I think Brian dug them Some from a box.

I believe early swirls were also batch glass not cullet. Different formulas and handling is my guess.

I completely disagree. I think shear set ups were designed to cut glass and the mark left was not designed , simply a result.

Thanks Mikey, I do try. (LOL).

Mikey, let me know when they get there and I will drop by with Steves present. The rain just stopped here and we got more in 3 days than all of 2013

I believe it would need to be hand gathered to have only one cutline. There have been many theories about single seam marbles( of which I believe most are hand gathered). I got to spend a lot of time with a very knowledgeable engineer at the Vegas show and he was in agreement. He has been studying marbles for years as he makes reproductions. We will be getting together in the near future in the hope that I will finally be able to understand how many of the CACs were made. He is of the opinion most all non swirl types were hand gathered but I disagree with that.(for now)