Roll-Up technique


		The method The technique is a combination of glass shaped in the oven and glass-blowing. Typically, one would start by making a fused flat design with the specific pattern, colors, expressions etc. as one wants. This design is rolled (hereby the name) on the glass-blower’s pipe and is shaped to the design one wanted. The method isn’t that different from the one glass-blowers use. The glass-blower just has more glass on the pipe, and it is often stringers there’re being rolled up. Below, the technique is explained through pictures of a specific example, the making of a tall vase. There’s a short explanation to every picture. The end of the paragraph is has some general considerations. Example in pictures 40 pictures showing the process:


		The workshop with 3 ovens. The left one is the one where the vase gets heated in, the middle one contains the liquid glass, and the right one is an oven to warm up and cool off the glass. Some glass is gotten from the oven in the middle, and will be used to roll the glass for the vase on. The casing glass is shaped to a flat button. The diameter is measured. A special instrument is used, it looks like a big scissor; in one end the length of the design is adjusted and the other end is this length divided by phi - so it matches the diameter. The glass for the vase has been heated to about 540 Celsius and taken out of the oven. The glass should be 6-9 millimeters thick. The glass was lying on an oven shelf with the inside up. Now it is going to be heated furthermore. The metal pieces at the end are to prevent that the edge is not overheated. After the heating the glass for the vase is rolled up on the pipe. The glass fastened in the end to be turning up in the final design. At the top of the glass you can see there is separator on the glass - the white. It will be brushed off with a regular hand brush. The ends are combined. The glass is shaped by rolling it on the metal plate. The glass needs to be put in the oven from time to time to keep a temperature on 11-1200 Celsius, where it is soft. There is now a button in the end there is open and the end is shaped. The glass button is necessary to blow the glass. The glass is shaped by wet pages of newspaper. A wet wooden spoon is used to shape the glass. Now the glass blower is shaping the glass to get a small surface, because this design is to be dipped in the liquid glass, to get a glass overlay. The glass overlay is not a necessarily but it does give some benefits, which will be described at the end of the paragraph. The glass is dipped in liquid glass to get a glass overlay. The surplus glass drips of. The glass is shaped to the final design with pages of wet newspaper. The glass is blown while it turns around and around. It needs to be turned all the time to make sure the gravity does not make is uneven. The glass has become longer and it slowly begins to look like a vase. The vase is being heated by a bunsen burner. The Bunsen burner is used when certain places on the glass has to be more flexible. The vase narrows into pipe. The vase is continuously heated. The heating happens a lot. The vase is being shaped. The glass blower has turned the pipe around vertical a couple of times, so the centrifugal force has pulled the vase long. The edge is shaped by rolling the design on the metal plate. The bottom of the vase is made flat. The top of the vase is heated before the pipes are "switched". The vase will be moved to another pipe which attaches by a little casing glass. The pipe needs to be placed exactly in the middle. It is heated again. The old pipe is still attached to the top of the vase, but is now pulled off. There is a little cut and then when there is tapped on the pipe it will come off. The top of the vase is being opened. Meanwhile making sure the hole is accurate. It opens more. If one wanted to make a spout or a handle it would be done in this process. Now one can see how the final design turned out. The vase is finished. The vase is moved from the pipe as before. There is a little cut, and there is carefully tapped on the pipe to the glass comes off - the assistant catches it. The vase goes to the oven to cool off. The vase is in the oven 12-16 hours to be cool off slowly. The final result. 0


		The assemble of the design Typically one would be able to see where the glass has been assembled – remember to think of that when you’re choosing a design. One would also be able to feel the assemble, unless there is a glass overlay. The reason that one can’t see the assemble on the glass blowers own work is that, he doesn’t use a whole glass plate that needs to be rolled up. He has some glass on the pipe, there’s the height of the design, and then he usually rolls colored powder and stringers of glass into the design. Naturally, it would have been prettier without the assemble, but I don’t think it’s a disaster, if it’s possible to place the vase in a corner for example, the assemble wouldn’t be visible. We live with visible assembles in many other contexts, e.g. lamp shades, casts, clothes etc. Glass overlay A glass overlay provides more depth and a smoother surface. Typically, the final design becomes bigger than the glass plate one started with, because it’s blown bigger. This means that the color gets lighter and any patterns can be blurry around the edges. The last part even more if there’s used glass overlay. Design The design can be spun in spiral – the glass blower does that when he rolls the glass on the metal plate by twisting the spinning a bit. A design there contains vertical or horizontal lines can easy become crooked, because it’s difficult for the glass blower to avoid twisting the glass a little. Furthermore, the pattern too can become crooked when shaping the glass. A symmetrical design or a design with the same distance between the elements can become unsymmetrical, because it can be difficult to assemble the ends of the glass in the roll-up process without changing the dimensions. The bottom of the glass doesn’t always become flat and even, if not you can make it flat, e.g. using sanders. Bullseye The glass blower usually works with glass with the expandability on 96 – which mean that one can hand in a design from for example System 96 glass. If the design doesn’t have glass overlay, one can use Bullseye glass instead. Remember though to hand in the button in Bullseye. The diameter has to be the length of the design divided by phi. Alternatively, the glass can be squished together – but that makes the design smaller and some glass will be lost.