How do they make these pieces?
 

I'm so curious.
ilook forward to hearing from you.
thank you

That looks like a Paul Stankard. CMOG might have some videos. There are numerous articles out there too.
https://www.cmog.org/

First off, PPP ;)

For large paperweights they make the inside bits first, keep warm or re-warm, and encase. That's a very simplistic answer to the question however. It takes a whole lot of work to get to the point of that excellence.

There are a lot of YouTube vids showing paperweights being made.



dj

In addition to what's been said - the clear glass used to encase paperweights like this (Schott S8 pucks) is increasingly hard to come by. A puck will often cost $50, if you can even find one to buy. It makes practicing these things rather expensive.

are they not making them anymore, Dusty?

Nevermind, I looked it up. Shame!

All of the above and a pinch of magic at just the right moment.

Those folks really know magic.

Paul Stankard creates the tableau of individual pieces and welds them together with a very small torch in this video at time marks 52:06 and 55:31.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgJRBiZnrIU

He then places the tableau on a graphite plate with a raised center and puts a tall collar on that which turns it into a cup ( not shown).

He then super heats a massive glob of glass and fills the cup with it, lets it cool some and pulls the whole thing out of the cup. ( He has trouble getting it out in this video because he put the collar on upside down and had the narrower end at the top when it should have been at the bottom.)

He then welds another glob of glass on the back of it and shapes it into the paper weight.

You can see glimpses of it at 1:28:55 .


The entire video is well worth watching if you have an hour and a half to spare.

Thank you all for your answer.

thank you l love you thank you~

That is a truly stunning piece of work. I don't think I have enough useful years left to get anywhere near that good :-(

Practice practice practice is followed by patience patience patience.

You will surprise yourself with the kind of corners you can turn in the future.

The only folks that know how good they are going to become at anything are all politicians and used car salesmen.

Very true, Speedslug! However, I'm knocking on a bit and may well be gaga in a few years, so I have a lot to pack in!! :-D

Aye, I am turning 62 shortly myself so I know exactly what you mean.

In a couple of weeks for me - but my Dad always said it was better to be over the hill than under it!!
Actually, I was only thinking the other day that my Grannie was definitely an old lady at 60 and I don't feel old most of the time .... unless I catch sight of myself in a mirror. Then I wonder who that is!:-D

Aye, but my grannie and most likely yours lived a much rougher life than I did.

Working and making it all work took a hell of a lot of effort just 50 years ago.

We didn't know that most ulcers were caused by a bug in our gut and we had real doctors telling us that one particular brand of cigarettes was better than another for petes sake.

One of the reasons they choose the age of 65 for the beginning ate of social security was because only about 6% of the population lived that long.
Now they are moving it up to 70 and they would go straight to 80 if they thought there wouldn't be riots in the streets.


ETA: Folks not too very long ago were rode hard and put away wet for decades on end.

What I've always wondered with this is how come the big blob of clear does not melt or distort the leaves or wings?

higher viscosity of the clear, the COE was around 109 or so. The encased items are pre-heated to avoid shocking. A vacuum pump helps to draw the glass down and eliminate bubbles.

They apparently don't make that 109 coe clear anymore, the schott pucks. I have no idea how someone would do it now.

I thought that Schott would still do a run if you bought the batch--is that no longer true?

I was under the impression that gaffer was going to take up some of the slack but since I don't do anything like that kind of work myself I wan't really paying attention.

National Geographic has a piece on his work years ago. It was the most amazing issue in the history of the magazine, imho.

Sue