raw clay. And scrap iron is added to pig iron. Dear, dear, who would think it. "Come on, all of you, I know the way," the broken bottles seem to say to the sand, lime and soda. So they all melt and run together. Whisk! A lot of matter out of place goes away into gas and leaves a thick, taffy-like, crystal paste in the pot, with some worthless skimmings on top brought up by the lime. You know how you have to skim the dirt and foam that boils up on taffy and jelly? So you do on glass and iron.
This is the first part of making all glass. Next comes the blower. He is a big, sweaty man with a pair of lungs like a blacksmith’s bellows. His only tool is a six foot long, hollow iron pipe to blow bubbles with. It is just the stem of a pipe, really, for it has no bowl. He heats the end of the pipe in the furnace, then dips it into the hot glassy paste, and turns it around until he has gathered a lump as big as a goose egg. He swings this in the air to cool it a little, then dips it in to take up some more glass. A third time he does this. He now has a lump as big as a small melon, and that weighs eight or ten pounds. You know glass is very dense and heavy, like iron.
He cools the glass a little more in a water bath. Then he rolls it on a polished iron table to the shape of a little Hubbard squash or big pear. It is still very hot and soft when he begins to blow his big glass bubble. He stands on the edge of a pit to blow, for the weight drags the bubble out long, and his breath stretches it wide. As the bubble becomes thinner it cools more rapidly. So he takes it to the furnace to heat and soften it several times, until it is blown as thin as a pane of window glass.
At this stage he cuts off the neck of the bubble and the end, making a big cylinder, or open glass drum that he catches on his pipe and warms in an oven. The warm, soft glass cylinder is rested on a table, split from end to end with a diamond glass cutter and carried to another oven. Then, when soft, it is ironed out into a flat sheet. The sheet is tempered, or heated and cooled slowly, ironed and polished and cut into window glass for shipping.
Bottles are made by blowing small lumps of glass into iron or brass two-part moulds. Plate glass for show windows, and thick mirrors, is rolled. Liquid glass of fine quality, with no flaws or bubbles or color, is poured from the melting pots onto perfectly smooth steel tables and rolled with steel rollers into sheets, as your mother rolls pie-crust. It is so heavy that the pots are lifted and tipped by cranes, and the tables are carried on wheels to tempering ovens.
