Rolling glass circa 1978. The height of fashion on the casting floor? Velvet bellbottoms?

Not today. But who notices apparel in 2008? You can’t see the pants for the tattoos.

Well, back to working out the timelines for the real tours that are coming through next week. If you want to know more about these and other activities that Bullseye has planned for the GAS conference, check out the SEE BE info that Mary Kay’s group put together.

Like everything else they do, it’s just brilliant.

After 16 hours of melting at about 2500F, the glass is ladled out of the tanks. By hand.

The casters need to move fast. As it gives off heat, the glass starts to set up. It needs to get to the rolling table before it’s too stiff to roll easily.

Bullseye operates two styles of rolling tables. The single-roller (shown here) consists of a water cooled steel table and one roller that flattens the glass across its surface. A caster spreads the gob of glass across the table in front of the roller to insure even coverage.

A single rolling table lets us make collage glasses like fracture-streamers, stringer glasses, etc., where the chips and/or threads of glass are composed on the table before the sheet is rolled.

On the second style of table, the double-roller, the glass is pressed between a pair of rollers, creating a sheet with more uniform top and bottom surfaces.

You may see either single- or double-rolling method as you speed across the casting floor…. on your way to the next stop on your factory tour…

…operating something that looks like a cross between a howitzer and a speculum.

It’s called a screw charger. It’s used to feed the batch into the furnace. It takes about 90 seconds to charge the contents of a single barrel (350 lbs) into a furnace. We used to shovel the batch in by hand. The screw charger reduces dust and back aches.

Each furnace will get charged 6-10 times during its 16-hour melt cycle. You won’t get to watch. We have to keep moving. Remember, there are 349 other people behind you on this tour.

Maybe I’ll use the next few blogs to practice The Routine.

We mix the raw materials, called “batch”, in 55-gallon drums – about 120 of them each day.

Looks pretty crude on one level.

On another level, the degree of precision required is staggering. In measuring out the batch, a miscalculation as small as 50 parts per million can result in off-color glass. An error of 1/4 of one percent of sand or soda can result in incompatibility. Often there are as many as 18 ingredients in a single barrel.

I think that equates to over 1000 opportunities to muck up every day.

But I’ve already started to depress myself.

What if YOU tell ME what you’d like to know about making glass? It might help us know what to say to the 350 tourists hitting our doorstep on June 18.

Why are dozens of well-dressed women hanging out in a parking lot in Southeast Portland?

After seeing glass batched, melted and formed, listening to a presentation on Moje, history and process, and finally seeing the operations of the fabrication studios, they left – wiser, we hope, and perhaps more curious about an art-making material that had been pretty foreign to most of them only a few hours earlier.

I’m always fascinated by the observations of first-time visitors to the factory. I liked these two especially:

“You sure have a lot of attractive young men working here.”

(Thank you, HR)

“Wow, it’s amazing to see a place where people actually MAKE something. I didn’t think we did that in this country anymore.”

(Come to think of it, it is a little un-American)