Cut Lines ???

[wvrons]

Lets hear from you about marble cut lines,seams,marks,folds. Why are they there? Why do some marbles have none? Why does some have only one and some have two? Why are some straight,curved,pointed? On four different manufacturers,single color,opaque marbles with cut lines,seams,marks,folds,can you identify each one? Have questions about cut lines,post them. Opinions,hearsay,experience,facts,post them. I am sure we all can learn something new,old pro or newbie.

Ron S.

[lstmmrbls]

Single seam CACs still have me perplexed. The old first in stream theory just doesn't cut it for me as I feel they would be much rarer if that was the case. some kind of semi mechanical handgather? Wish I knew. Peace,Galen

[moonzone]

YES!! to all peoples who can lend a helpful knowledge of such a confusing question of is it this or is it a that?

or WHAT THE?

need of quizzes and true or false and multiple choice questions, to let it all sink into our brain stems.

WOW!! by all means let this posting rise and soar!!

marbles are a tough knowlege, but i'm sticking it out. the hints are there just gotta see and learn them.

jeannie

[Jeff Hale]

.

[bigjohn691500]

Just imagine a stream of molten glass spitting out a tube and depending on the size of the marble being made this shear comes down and cuts off a glob of glass just the right amount to make the marbles intended, the shear mark will be "the cut line or seam" once the glob is cut it falls onto an long auger, as the marbles rolls down the auger it is cooling off and shaping it round,, the difference in companies cut lines is they run different machines,, the same principle but they own their own, some may be even timed different,,, now when you make thousands and thousands of marbs with the same machine you will have a certain pattern,, learning each companies pattern helps to identify them,,,,,bj

[lstmmrbls]

And actually a V shaped blade gives a nice straight cutoff line as the edges of the blade hit the rounded stream at apoint that becomes a straight line. Peace,Galen

[tankgrrl29]

as for the single cutline, imagine the glass being like toothpaste coming out of the tube.

it lands on your brush, usually with two ends (cut lines)

but if you start applying it to your toothbrush and, instead of a line, you move the brush or tube so as to make the paste fold back upon itself, you can see how you'd the two "cutlines" very close to each other.

with glass, i don't know at what point this happens - or how - but it's the same principle, i think. and it can result in either two seams being very close, or even overlapping each other - such as with a diaperfold.

i've heard that peltier had a number of different types of sheers - some pinching like what jeff shows (like nail clippers) and another that had two parts that came toward each other from opposite sides (imagine a pair of scissors taken apart, hold one part in each hand...point each one at the other, bring together, but only come close as you pass by, clipping the marble off along the way)

i can easily imagine that this last type could put a Yin-Yang spin on a marble by twisting the pattern as it cut. (miller-schmiller! ) and i'd guess there's a similar explanation involving the sheers for the single-seam marbles.

dang, i think we need a youtube demo!!

[Guest marbleus1]

Seams = shear marks

Then could we think of it as all marbles have two.. the one from its cut and the one from the previous cut ..leading edge of stream would have the cut from the previous marble shearing as well as the trailing edge cut.

David

[lstmmrbls]

Chris if that was the case I believe there would be many many more CACs with cutlines almost touching. At one time I thought that also but when you see a single seam CAC half or look through a nice transparent Guinea(more of those are single than the others it seems) that kind of smooshing up just doesn't appear to have happened. There usually is a small looping of surface glass directly under the seam but it is not smooshed. Love that word. The loop is a little similar to what you can see inside some Navarre types. I keep leaning toward a handgather of some sort. Peace,Galen

[FIRE81]

I have Vitros that have a SEAM/CUT LINE that runs 12:00- 6:00

on one side. And 3:00-9:00 on the other.

I only find this "pattern" on Vitro Du-Lites...Tri-Lites

and Superiors.

If my discription doesn't make sense.

Just point one of your INDEX fingers

straight up ( Like T.R. did in his picture )

And then cross your other INDEX finger

across the other one so they looks like this ( + ).

Anyone else have any marbles like this ???

Any GUESS or THEORY on how this happened or what caused this ?

The matrix in these marbles don't have any radical twists

or swirls that would " CATCH YOUR EYE " and lead one to

think these were rejects or errors.

Of course I've been looking for these when this TOPIC

was posted and can't find them.

THEIR JUST WEIRD............

I had to place one finger nail on one of these seams

and chase the other seam down and place my other

finger nail on that one just to verify that what I was looking

at.............was what I just tried to described.

RAR

* I don't even know if this is the type of SEAM DILEMA Ron was asking about *

[Kokoken]

I think this is the $64,000 question in the marble world. I have never been able to figure it out at all. Les Jones once told me that all machine marbles have seams. It's just that often we can't see them and this makes a lot of sense. I mean a gob feeder has to leave some kind of mark, doesn't it. Could it be that the seams get buried inside the mib, or postioned and shaped on the surface, as it is being formed ? I think so.

[Alan]

I think this is the $64,000 question in the marble world. I have never been able to figure it out at all. Les Jones once told me that all machine marbles have seams. It's just that often we can't see them and this makes a lot of sense. I mean a gob feeder has to leave some kind of mark, doesn't it. Could it be that the seams get buried inside the mib, or postioned and shaped on the surface, as it is being formed ? I think so.

The ability to discern the seam is a function of many factors. Those would include the contrast between the different glass colors, the shape and sharpness of the cutoff mechanism, the stream speed of the hot glass at cut-off, the opacity of the glass colors, the subsequent machine forming action after cutoff, glass temperature, cooling rate and time to cool to sphere shape in the rounding mechanism (longer = probably better smoothing/blending between stream colors). Each one of these are variables which can (and did) change from day to day and through wear on various key machine parts.

Having spent a lot of time at the Akro plant site, examining a lot of marble rejects, and owning some Akro machine parts... I got some sense of what went right and how things looked when they went wrong. The scale and depth and number of marble reject dumps were HUGE. One of the first things one sees is that marble production was a very low precision, fairly variable volume business. I got a sense what the machine did at the beginning of a run, what they looked like when things got "dialed in" and what the end of run and malfunction pieces looked like. The variability of the glass temperature and the glass colorant mix was greater than one would think. Marble production was not rocket science - by a long shot.

Seams varied due to these many factors (and probably more) - so the ability to typify one company's seam is IMO very difficult and assumes constancy of manufacturing method and process over time.

[Jeff Hale]

p.

[wvrons]

Thanks to all who posted,i thought we may see more questions or pics. Some good information about cutters and machine operation. I believe most have said that it is difficult to id a marble co. or maker by cut lines. Vitro and others did have different cut lines for the various different reasons we have heard above. Alan said a lot of it,there were several variables,quality and constancy was a goal but meeting orders was number one. I agree production was not rocket science,these were toys for childrens play,not collectors items. Cut lines can sometimes be helpful in identification but they can vary. Hopefully you will be able to find two or more (3-4 is better) distinct things to help id a marble. Cut lines even by the same company can and do vary. From the start i have heard people say,thats a Akro cut line,thats a Vitro cut line,but i had a hard time seeing the same thing. I saw differences in the same companies marbles. I also have never found a positive answer that i have been satisfied with for the single cutline. Yes they all had to have a cut line,but some would be or are difficult for me to find without a loupe. There is a long list of variables that can and do change cut lines. Even in the same company we saw,two cut lines,one cut line and almost no cut lines.

Ron S.