Are you thinking of revamping your glass blowing supply inventory? Whether you’re just starting out and you want to make sure you have the best tools available or you’re a seasoned veteran who wants higher quality supplies in your studio, the importance of ensuring your glass blowing materials are the best for you can mean the difference between creating truly amazing projects and ending up with shoddy, cracked failed experiments. Here are a few suggestions to consider when browsing for new glass blowing supplies.
The first thing you should consider when making a list for glass blowing supply would have to be your budget. After all, when it comes to a painstaking, delicate art form such as glass blowing, you can’t afford to put price over quality. Be sure to do your homework when it comes to purchasing certain brands or models of furnaces, rods, blow pipes, shaping tools, and others. Failure to do so can result in some very expensive experiments indeed.
Once you’ve decided what you want and have a good estimate of how much it will be, it’s time to go browsing. Most glass blowing studios are equipped with three quality heating stations: the furnace, the glory hole, and the annealer. Some exceptional studios use one furnace to achieve the purpose of all three, but having three separate furnaces provides a lot more dexterity and convenience than having just one. When it comes to creating high quality glass art, you can’t go wrong with having a set of the best furnaces you can handle. These, more than any other glass blowing supply you’ll own, affects your projects the most.
Other glass blowing supply include shaping tools. Once you’ve melted the glass and begun the rudimentary process of shaping it, the tweezers, shears, shaping tables, and other supplies play an important role in creating everything from generalized convex and concave shapes to impossibly minute details. Any seasoned glass blower will tell you that you don’t want to have your shaping tools let you down, especially when you’re in the middle of handling a white hot hunk of molten glass.
Finally, one of the more fun aspects of picking out glass blowing supply would have to be choosing the glass and colors for your project. Some artists prefer to melt powdered glass so that they have an exact amount of trace elements, while others prefer to melt down larger nuggets for faster convenience. Colors include powdered glass, colored rods, and a ceramic material known as frit. Regardless of which you use, you will be able to create colors, patterns, and textures unlike anything you saw before. Learn more about glass blowing supply today!
