Past Work - Hot Glass Trophies
I've ended up with two trophy projects for Looe Pioneers' "10 Miler" race - a single cast glass one, listed elsewhere, and six simpler trophies for the 1st, 2nd and 3rd runners, male and female. I'm making the "simpler" ones by making a half a goblet shape in solid steel, placing it inside a graphite box, and then filling the box with molten glass. "Simpler"... once the half goblet is made pouring the molten glass only takes a few minutes. | ||||
Actually, I made two half-goblets on this lathe. More precisely, Noah, the metals lecturer at Flameworks, the college large metal workshop, made them because I'm not allowed to operate the lathe. | ||||
We found some 50-mm diameter semi-circular bar, so I welded 2 lengths together and turned them on the lathe, which removed some of the welds. I then ground the rest of the weld off to deliver two half-goblets. They're a bit wider than I would have liked but it's laborious removing metal on the lathe. | ||||
Here's 2 of the casts. I'm thinking of gluing them together back to
back after sand-blasting the goblets. I might grind and polish the front
so you can see the goblet more clearly. These two casts have got cracks near the base of the goblet - need to try and figure out how to avoid this in the future. I'm not sure whether I'll make back-to-back casts for all 6 trophies - depends how many uncracked casts I can make by the end of February! | ||||
I
found a way of reducing the incidence of cracking. Instead of levering
the goblet out of the glass I put the whole thing on its side, let the
steel cool and contract, and then shook it out. Tyhe result was more
distortion on the top of the blocks but less cracking. Still less than
50% success rate, though. I've ended up with 8 un-cracked blocks, so I make double ones for the male and female winners and single ones for the 2nd and 3rd male and females. The photo shows the engraving I've done on what was the top of the blocks and which is now the sides of the double blocks. | ||||
Final piece. I was in such a rush at the end that I bonded the two Looes together, and the two 10 Milers together. Had to pop them apart in a kiln, which took 24 hours and made it impossible for me to apply the resists for engraving of the "1st Male" and "1st Female". Still, they didn't really need it - or that's how I resolved the issue! | ||||
The resists came out okay on the trophies for the 2nd and 3rd placed runners. I should have sand-blasted the "Looe" for a longer time on this one - doubled the time to 60 seconds on the subsequent trophies. | ||||