Success!

Well, we finally did it! We were shooting for a "Raffinato" style piece of 30" in the "perfect world", 27" up to 30" in the "normal world". We were about 29 1/4" before cold working. We ended up with 28" exactly. Not the 30" but close. Actually we were over 31" before we transfered. Our glory hole is only 24-26" deep. We had to keep 3 torches on it to keep it from cracking. (You can see the picture) This was our third attempt. We (Micah, Krista, and I) had glass on the pipe about 3 1/2 hours with about 1 hour prep time before that. I would say for where we are now, a 28" finished piece is about 10 times harder than a 15"-16" piece. As we progress, I know that will change. After that we blew a 16" piece and that used to be stressful. No stress. It felt like nothing on the end of the pipe. we guess the finished piece weighs between 12 and 13 pounds. Doesn't sound like much weight, but wait until you get that stretched out 30' on the end of the blow pipe with a thick moile, and the glass moving. Anyway, we want to thank Roy for helping (actually he did it and we barely helped him) cold work the piece! Roy did a great job! Roy, you the MAN! Here are a few pictures.