Tuesday, January 3, 2012

A Year of Gratitude - Day One Hundred Ninety-eight

Day 198 - Focus
I have been working on a glass project for months now - making drops for a chandelier.  I have had some (qualified) success at imploding cobalt blue glass into the clear drops, and I have the potential for 54 of them to hang from the chandelier.  I have 20 that I feel are good enough to use; five others are adequate, and could be used toward the center of the chandelier where they would be less noticeable, but I’d like to make enough that these wouldn’t be needed.  I have a few more that didn’t turn out, but are consistent enough with each other that I could use them; again, I’d prefer to use better ones, but I doubt I’ll take time to make enough.
You see, they take a long time to make - the best I’ve done is 20 minutes to make a single drop - and I usually only have an hour or two to devote to the torch work.  This results in a total of averaging four or five drops that actually turn out (one or two often crack because of an air bubble caught inside, or I have allowed the drop to cool too quickly and unevenly).  It’s a slow process, and frankly, I’m getting bored with it.
Today, though, I did better than usual.  I made seven drops, and only one cracked.  If I can do the same thing tomorrow, I should have enough to complete enough to go at each light (five drops each at the end of six arms).  We’ll see what I can do for the rest of the chandelier.  I’m going to be glad to have this done.

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