Have I Lost My Marbles?

[lopacki]

I posted this on a bead forum I belong to and thought the folks here might be interested.

Still playing with marbles. I recently went from hand made German marbles and tried drilling machine made marbles. Well the images below show that it is easier said than done.

After I had ruined half of the marbles because they cracked I thought it was because they had not been annealed properly. I placed a call to my favorite glass master Art Seymour and we discussed this, he agreed and said that the machine marbles were made in such quantity per day (in my research some machines made nearly 200 a minute) and sold for so little that there was no way they would take the time to anneal. As I get obsessed with new projects with Arts guidance I purchased a quite expensive digital heat control for my burn out oven, I got the control yesterday and plan to hook it up this weekend.

I think that once I have all of the bugs worked out Suzi and I will have a winner. Suzi told me that once things are ironed out she wants to drill some of the marbles. We hope to have quite a few at Tucson but at this time what you see is what we have.

All my best ....... Danny

[Steph]

Sounds like fun. Hope we see some holey marbles.

[Marlene]

I think we should fill up the holes in some beads and make them be marbles! Hmmm?

[lopacki]

Marlene,

Most likely harder to fill the holes than put them in. Thanks for the funny comment.

All my best ......... Danny

[kbobam]

I haven't had much luck with drilling marbles.

But I only tried it once, and the experimentation is ongoing.

Your approach from the marble standpoint is very interesting.

I haven't considered that at all, and have been thinking more

about trying different drilling approaches.

Maybe a combination of our two thought processes?

The first thing I want to try next is a proper 'tile' drill bit.

For those not familiar, a tile bit is generally used for drilling holes

in the ceramic tile in your bathroom. Apparently they're good

for glass too. I didn't know this until I downloaded the photo below.

It's a common occurrence in the construction trade for people to

assume that the masonry bits they have for drilling brick, block, and

concrete can certainly drill through a tile! Just isn't so!

Another aspect worth considering is how a high speed drill, which

would also include tools like the Dremel, might compare with a low

speed/high torque drill. The torquey drill could be applied with a

great deal of pressure, while the more common high speeds couldn't.

The low speed is going to take some time, kind of like drilling a well,

but if that's what works, great!

And last but maybe not least - how about a lubricant?

If you're drilling a hole through a steel girder, lubricating oil is vital.

In spite of the much smaller scale here, maybe that could be important too.

Just talking out my tail here, but FWIW!