Colored glass marbles – In today’s world marbles are actually made up of glass and used for industrial tasks. Glass is not only inexpensive and durable but also quite beautiful. Where in the marble shop marbling is a very serious business. Its important for a marble to be both round and beautiful. But do you know how marbles actually made ?
As to create colored glass marbles, the factory melts recycled glass with marbles made earlier. All this goes into a kiln heated to 1204 degrees Celsius. After 16 hours, they open the door at the bottom of the kiln and the molten glass flows out. A shearing device cuts the stream every 1/2 a second forming segments called slugs that become marbles. To make different sized marbles they adjust the device to cut at shorter or longer intervals. The slugs slide down shoots landing between grooves on spinning cast iron rolls.
The spinning keeps the slugs from sticking. It needs to be 72 hours to cool completely but their final appearance is already set. That was determined back in the kiln when the air flow drove the heat to melt the glass and mix the colors. Then the channels separate the good from the bad.
Openings along the way weed out the marbles that are too big or too small and collects the ones that are just right. Some of the marbles are hand made, like the craftsmen preheats some clear glass in a small oven. then the craftsmen breaks off a piece of colored glass.
After the cleared glass has melted in the furnace over night, he gathers some on the steel rod. Then picks up a chunk of preheated colored of glass with it. The craftsmen forms a nob and works the mass into a long string up to 5 meters long and thin as a noodle. He will use them in various colors to decorate the clear glass cores of the marbles. He gather a clump of melted clear glass on the rod and shapes with wet newspaper, which won’t stick to the hot glass.
After shaping the end, the craftsmen rolls the clump on several preheated colored glass strings and then back in the furnace. The craftsmen repeats these steps up to 3 times and rolls the clump on a metal table to even out the surface between each trip to the furnace. Then he adds a layer of clear glass on top. With the another tool, he stretches the clump to about 1/2 a meter long. Then the craftsmen makes the several cores.
To make the second layer of the core, he rolls a 5 centimeter long segment on two colored glass silvers called ribbons. After rolling them in the furnace to melt them, he flattens the ribbons with pliers and snips off the access at the ends.
The craftsmen then wraps the cores and the ribbons in a layers of clear glass, then hand shapes it. Now he rolls the cores on more glass strings, then its back in the furnace to melt them. He then adds one more clear glass layer and the inside is finished. That’s a total of 6 layers for this marble.
The craftsmen shapes the glass with several metal and wooden tools. He then measures the diameter with metal calipers and gradually sculpts a sphere. He then make up to 5 marbles from this segments ranging up to the size of a golf ball.
After scoring the glass with a knife, the craftsmen places it in the open end of a pipe to hold it. Then he gently taps the rod which breaks the glass and releases the sphere. He melts away the bump left at the spot where the glass broke. Next the marble goes into an oven at 530 degrees Celsius. The oven slowly cools overnight to strengthen the glass. This is how the colored marbles glass are made.
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