Transcript
Hi, my name is Ed Donovan. We are here at DC GlassWorks. You can find us at dcglassworks.com We are a public access glassblowing facility. We also do metal, and metal casting, and welding. We are primarily a teaching facility. We want to share with people the “magic” of glassblowing; it’s an amazing substance. Today, I’m going to be talking you about glassblowing and the use of tweezers. We basically use the tweezers to grab hold of things, or to pull on the glass. They’re held with your thumb and forefinger. Usually you want to hold pretty close to the tip so you have a good grasp of the tweezers and also you have a lot of control over the tip of the tweezers. You DON’T want to be holding too far back or you’re not going to be able to squeeze the tweezers together. They’re a very springy steel, they’re usually a fairly, very heavy gauge steel. If your hands are not strong enough, if you’re grabbing the end you’ll be able to squeeze down with the tweezers. You’re going to grab pipes and punty rods, and/or the glass, to manipulate those[them] into the places you want the glass to be (or the pipe to be). When you’re assembling the punty to the bottom of the piece your going to grab the punty rod and try and find the bottom of the piece. When you attach the punty to the bottom of the piece, you’re also gonna use your tweezers as your knock-off device. When you’re ready to actually transfer from the blowpipe to the punty and you’ve attached the punty to the bottom of the piece, you’re going to use the backs of the tweezers to tap on the pipe; and therefor creating the stress in the glass that separates the pipe. That’s how you use your tweezers!
