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The purpose of this page is to provide some suggestions of
language and sources of craftsmen and materials suppliers that
are useful for the glassblower. In many cases, the glass worker
may wish to develop some of the skills of the various crafts
instead of paying for them and suggestions will be made in each
area as to how much a glassblower really needs. If the visitor
has any suggestions, please contact
Any of these shops are more likely to work well with the
glassworker if the time is taken to search out and establish
comfortable friendship with a small shop, so well marked pencil
sketches define the need and honesty works both ways. I have
found asking "Have I made any choices that will cost me a
bunch of money???" to be useful when first dealing with a
shop. For example, when printing a newsletter, a print shop
explained the cost of putting all the pictures on one page vs. on
each page and of using a single color for accent vs. two or three.
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- Welder -
- Welding as a craft has many complications,
but welding for glassblowers, who normally only use low
carbon steel for frames, etc, is fairly easy (local link). However, for the person who does not wish to
buy the equipment or learn the skills, a few words of
terminology and advice may help.
Most welding shops are used to doing fairly bulk jobs
fairly quickly. Drawings should be simple but accurate
rather that being filled with a lot of detail. A welding
shop is prepared to grind for welding, not accurately cut
or weld to a finished size measured in thousandths of an
inch. Most welding shops will not deal well with metric.
They will deal well with precut metal and jigging it up
for a square joint.
My experience (limited) is that while a welding shop can
torch cut a circle from thick steel for a grinding disk,
keeping it flat may a problems as the heavy hammer is
picked up to whang the scrap off.
- Sheet Metal -
- A sheet metal shop is most often used to
making straight-line bends and fitting sheets to make
boxes. Most have a tool that will put a smooth curve in
sheet metal (think of a hot water heater shell.) When I
asked a shop to make long straight curved profile pieces
for drip edge to match my roof edge, they said sure and
did it with several straight bends on a brake.
For the glass artist, the most likely work at a sheet
metal shop is bending a hood or making a box. In theory,
making a box should be easy, but other than air
conditioning places - which call it a plenum - I found it
hard to communicate the idea. When I took an existing lid
around, the cost was higher than I wanted.
It is possible to build boxes from L bend sheets with
pop-rivets or screws, but the shop assembled unit will
look neater.
- Machinist -
- A machinist is a person who carves metal,
usually using tools like a lathe, milling machine, and
drill press. A machinist expects to get a good drawing
with specific dimensions of the object to make. Most
machine shops today make their living as job shops - that
means they contract to produce 20 tanks or 300 levers or
4,000 turned widgets. They may or may not be able/willing
to do your one job. The better your drafting, the more
specific they can be about cost. A computer added drafting and design [CADD]
drawing to the proper specifications will be more useful and may be able to
be sucked in and used directly on the machine. American machinists
will probably prefer to work in inches and decimal fractions rather than
metric measure and most work is done to the about a thousandth (0.001) of an
inch. Finer work than this is more expensive.
- Electrician -
- A licensed electrician will be familiar with dealing with
the city or other code enforcement agency and with the power company.
Because of the risk of fire and electrocution code enforcement is strong in
this area. In order to estimate a job, the electrician must know the total
power to be delivered (watts, amps, volts) and the distance to be covered.
Location of outlets and connection boxes should be discussed or graphed.
Any special requirements should be stated up front - for example, in my
house, every outlet has a separate drop from the attic, meaning I can shift
an outlet easily from one circuit to another - especially in new
construction often all the outlets in a section of wall are connected laterally by
drilling through the studs which saves wire but puts all the outlets on the
same circuit semi-permanently once the sheet rock or paneling is on the
wall.
 Will accept a better description of terminology and tasks
used
- Plumber -
- A licensed plumber's work is subject to inspection by the
local code enforcement authority because the work is commonly buried in the
ground, foundation, or walls and thus is expensive to repair or replace.
Installation of plumbing work in an existing structure with enclosed walls
is often expensive and a discussion of changes that will save money may be
in order.
- Plumbers work with three major kinds of materials:
plastic, copper, and iron/steel. Each of the first two can use add-on
threaded fittings or solvent/solder connections and the plumber must know
which materials and connections are legal in various applications - air,
gas, hot water, cold water must be handled differently.
Will accept a good description of terminology and tasks used
- Refractory -
- Will accept a good description of terminology and tasks used
- Printing -
- Will accept a good description of terminology and tasks used
- Photography -
- Will accept a good description of terminology and tasks used
- Concrete -
- Will accept a good description of terminology and
tasks used
- Burners -
- Will accept a good description of terminology and tasks used
- Controllers -
- Will accept a good description of terminology and tasks used
- Fire Control -
- Will accept a good description of terminology and tasks used
- Safety -
- Will accept a good description of terminology and
tasks used
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