this tutorial was made to show you how to blow your own shards to use in lampworking. hopefully the pictures help you in your quest to blow the perfect shard.

 

i assume that you have basic lampworking skills before undertaking this project, and that you are using proper safety gear (ie: glasses).

 

one word of caution, take care when your in the "blowing" phase...blow too hard and your gathered glass will explode (which happened to me the first time, and it scared the poo out of me!) now, let's blow some glass!

 

here's what you'll need : glass of choice, hollow mandrel, empty metal bucket or coffee can.

 

	showing the hollow mandrel   DO NOT coat your mandrel with release.
	heat your mandrel...glowing or not, you just want to be sure it's warm enough for the glass to stick to it.
	begin laying your glass at the very tip of the mandrel. i usually lay one full rotation of glass on the mandrel....almost the size of a smallish spacer bead.   the important thing to remember is to keep that hollow part of the mandrel open. if you close this off, you won't be able to blow into the glass and you'll have to start over.
	here's a shot of the start of the glass...notice that the hole in the mandrel is still exposed.
	continue to build glass on the initial layer you've already placed on the mandrel.   it's very important not to leave gaps while building this bubble. picture making a hollow bead, that's basically what we're doing here.
	keep winding your glass, shaping it like a beehive.   when you're first starting out, you don't need to be concerned about the thickness of the walls of the glass you're building...instead, just pay more attention to closing gaps in the glass.   the total size of the beehive you've just built will not need to be any larger than the size of a large grape.   when you've built it to this size close the bulb completely with additional glass.
	a shot of the beehive/bubble of glass when it's closed.
	now it's time to heat your bulb of glass until it's nice and smooth, and just starting to glow.   remember to keep spinning as you would when making a normal bead so the bulb doesn't get too hot on one side and collapse in on itself.   for our purposes, the glass bulb does not need to be a perfect round...it's okay if it's an ugly shape.
	now we're going to start blowing!   at this point your bulb should be glowing hot in order to blow it properly.   initially you'll want to rotate the mandrel as you start to blow, just so it doesn't expand off into one direction.   a moderate hard puff will get it going.
	continue blowing into the mandrel as the glass cools down.   this part of the process goes fairly quickly as the glass will get cold really fast as it thins out.   blow too softly and you'll have thick shards, blow too hard and they'll be thinner than paper and you're bulb might explode.   this part takes practice...and i would suggest using really cheap glass as you're learning.
	this photo shows the finished bulb...see it's not pretty, but that's not going to matter once you break it down into shards.   i used dark silver plum glass for this tutorial, so you can see how thin i've blown the glass. (i prefer using the shards that are really paper thin.)   rest your bulb still attached to the mandrel in your bucket or can to cool. as this happens, the bulb may break itself off the mandrel on it's own.
	the finished bulb, ready to be broken down.   until you get a handle on this, i suggest tapping the bulb (while it's in the clean can or bucket) with a heavy mandrel to break it.   or you can slip on a pair of gloves and do it by hand. just be careful not to cut yourself!   shard pieces can be as small or large as you want them to be to use on your beads. play, experiment and have fun!

copyright amber ballard 2008

no reproductions or distribution without permission