Was wondering if anyone made their own Marbles?

Mighty_Mouse

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I got a basic glass bead making kit last year. It was the closest my wife could find that started someone out from the beging of thing with lampwork and glass blowing. I tried making my first marble a few days ago and although i had fun messing with the glass what i got from it well i think if i called it a marble the other marbles would laugh at it lol. And i guess i took it from the flame to fast because it craked(bad) lol. If there are people that do lampwork and marble making maybe you could give me a few starting pointers. thanks for reading this. And HH
 

duffytrash

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theres lotsa people thaty make lampwork marbles...it prob cracked because it wasnt annealed right...you need a kiln and cool them down slowly...
 

Sandman

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Mighty_Mouse said:
I got a basic glass bead making kit last year. It was the closest my wife could find that started someone out from the beging of thing with lampwork and glass blowing. I tried making my first marble a few days ago and although i had fun messing with the glass what i got from it well i think if i called it a marble the other marbles would laugh at it lol. And i guess i took it from the flame to fast because it craked(bad) lol. If there are people that do lampwork and marble making maybe you could give me a few starting pointers. thanks for reading this. And HH

Thanks for the info. I never thought of making marbles. I used to play with glass making as a kid. :coffee2:
 

Marbleguy

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Nov 2, 2008
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Am so glad I read this..

First,here's some folks who make marbles http://www.landofmarbles.com/contemporary-art-marbles.html
Several years ago I contacted one of them to see if he could make marbles from the old Akro Agate glassware I've been digging up by the bucket full in the desert ghost town I live in. I sent him some of the glass and he made a stunning marble out of it. I,too bought a glass making kit. Got the whole deal. Apparntly your kit did'nt have the fiberglass 'blanket' to put your hot glass into so it could cool down slowely. Problem is that glass making kits are good to make glass beads but not marbles. And the glass provided comes in the form of thin rods. Easy to work with. The glass I've got is dozens of buckets filled with Akro Agate and Depression Glass (especially uranium glass which glows under UV light) and all the glass is irregular broken pieces. So it's a real be-atch trying to work with it.
 

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Mighty_Mouse

Mighty_Mouse

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I got the fiberglass blanket. And the cooling wasnt the problem. I just dont have the experence with things yet. I had formed this glob of glass and was trying to give it some round shape and with doing this i let it cool to much and tried reheating to get some more shape(was trying for the round look) lol when i took it from the flame the second time is when it cracked on me. Theres been some good youtube video that i watched but the videos are of basic stuff not detailed things which is what im looking for. My friend in CA was into the lampwork and got real good at it, taught his friend how to do things and his friend made some real nice Marbles which in turn his friend gave them to him which led my friend giving them to me. He said they were the bad batch he made but i can't see anything wrong with them. I will have to take a few pics and post them when i get my cam. charged.
 

FLNative

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I make marbles. Where at in Florida are you? I'm in Palm Bay, if you can get here I'll give you the run down on how it's done. What kind of glass are you using? In my experience even with fiber blanket soft glass will crack half the time. You can get away with more if you're using boro. Either way you really need a kiln and to get the marble from the flame to the kiln quickly. It also could have cracked if you mixed 2 different COE's of glass.
 

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