The Best Murrine Pattern I've Ever Made - Narrated Glassblowing Process

Hey everybody, welcome back to the studio. Today we're going to be making a piece using a color application method called Marini. These pieces are always some of the most fun to make and they always come out with amazing colors and amazing patterns. So let's go ahead and get into the studio and blow some glass. So we have our pattern here on this little plate. We're preheating it in our garage and we want it to be right around 900 degrees. This thing's been sitting in here for about 45 minutes. So Will's going to take it and move her over to our glory hole to bigger oven. This big oven is right around 2000 degrees and all these little pieces, these little discs of pattern that we have on here, our little marinis, are going to start to melt together. As they start to heat up on the plate and as they melt, we're going to slowly start to squish them together to minimize all of the holes and the gaps in between each individual disc. Each one of these little slices has a bunch of blue and turquoise and white in it and you can see that I'm using these kind of big metal sticks to slowly start to tack everything together. We'll flip the plate, we'll turn it 180 degrees before we put it back in, and we'll blast the middle of it. Sometimes the outside areas can get way too hot and we want the inside to squeeze at the same rate that the outside does. So we'll go ahead and flip the plate here in a second and we'll put it back into the glory hole. The reason we flip the plate 180 degrees is because there's a burner on one side of the glory hole so just that one side will exponentially heat up compared to the others and we really want this thing to have nice even heating. So we always flip it 180 degrees before we go back in. Now the plan with this, just like the cane roll-ups we've done before, and you guys probably seen some of the other Marini pieces, but for anybody new, basically what we're doing is we're going to try to compress this down and then I'll end up rolling this pattern up around my blowpipe. So we'll have this as kind of like a cylinder and then we'll be able to make a piece with it and this way we get a really intricate design. So I'm going to let Will take this and then I'm actually going to head over to the furnace with a blowpipe and we're going to gather what we call a collar. It's a small ring of glass on the tip of a blowpipe that I'll use to wrap this up around it. So I've got a little bit of glass out of the furnace. We're going to cool the pipe really quick and then I'll head over to the glory hole and I'm actually going to blow a bubble into this and the bubble will shoot out of the tip so we'll actually have a hole exposed at the end. Once that hole is exposed I have a small amount of time to kind of size it up to make sure it's just the right kind of a circumference around it so that we can roll that pattern up perfectly into a nice cylinder. All right awesome so we've got it on the blowpipe that's kind of one of the harder parts you know making sure it doesn't stick to the plate if it gets too hot it'll do that and if it's too cold it'll just break but now you can see we have some kind of residue some dust on the outside this will be called kiln wash. So there's a separating layer of dust that's on that plate to make sure that it doesn't stick and what happened was we spun the actual pattern on the plate a few times and it picked up a lot more than it should have so you're going to see me dust this a few times to try to get rid of all of that kind of residual dust. Yeah I think so you want to take it well you can take the internals you take one more and I'll get outside. All right so we've connected it over and now we basically have our cylinder but we still have lots of holes so what we're going to do is we're going to try to melt this down so that we can get rid of all those gaps. All right sweet so we've minimized a lot of the holes and now we actually just have a big kind of hole at the tip right so what we're going to end up doing is Will's going to gather a little bit of glass out of the furnace and he's going to cut it off onto our marver this big metal table right here so this is him doing that and then I'm actually going to take our piece and I'm going to use this piece of clear glass to cap off the tip. Traditionally we do what's called a termination where I would just get rid of the color that's on the end but I want to keep all of that color so I don't want to close it off and cut it that way we're going to use the clear glass to terminate it so that I can keep my entire pattern. You ever seen the plunger? So we found a small hole that was near the base of the piece and what we're going to do is we're just going to heat it up over and over and try to compress it down so that we lose that you know we want the whole thing to be airtight so that when Will blows into the pipe it starts to expand if we have any holes anywhere the air is going to escape and it's just not good. All right sweet so we sealed the hole up and now all we have to do is get rid of that clear glass that's on the end so we're going to do like a regular termination like we would on any other roll-up type piece where we'll just get rid of this glass. All right so we terminated the end we got rid of all the clear glass and we have our pattern exactly how we want it now we're going to shape it up just a little bit more we'll let it cool down and then we'll be able to put it back into the furnace to gather some clear glass on top of it. Lost in lonely dreams again Logan. I needed to get it more connected you know because that I think is what got the gap I should have been like hey like help me with the tweezer. So for anybody new to the channel this is our furnace this is where we get all of our clear glass from it houses about 700 pounds of glass and it holds it at about 2100 degrees it's on 24-7 we never turn it off. So I'm going to come out with a lot of clear and then I'll hold it vertically and strip off all the glass we don't need. All right perfect so now we have our next layer of glass this is the only time we were going to gather on top of it you can add more glass if you want but the more glass that I get the heavier it'll be the bigger of a piece you're going to make and with these kind of patterns the more distorted things will get so I want it to be kind of a mid-sized vase so we're not going to add any more clear glass. So right now we have two kind of different levels of temperature the inside is cold we cooled it down quite a bit before we put it into the furnace and the outside is fresh really molten glass so over time it's going to start to even out you have a small amount of time to really manipulate that clear glass and make sure it's an even layer on the outside before the inside starts to heat up. So we'll take a heat in the glory hole and now everything is going to be more of kind of a similar heat and everything will move together that's really what we want you don't want the inside to be cold and the outside to be hot we want everything to move together. And now we're going to work on inflating the piece so you're going to see me use the marvering table which is really good at cooling down and shaping the glass as well as my newspaper tool here while I have will blow into the pipe so we can inflate it and then shape it and start to really heat up that area that's closer to the pipe. The tip of the glass gets really hot you know the farther you go into that glory hole the heating chamber the hotter it is and it's the first thing in it's the last thing out so the blue area that's kind of near my metal pipe is much colder you can tell by the color because it's the last thing that goes in it's the first thing out so we use this torch to really heat up that back section so that we can get a better expansion around the whole piece more evenly. Thank you just get used to it yeah sweet I've heard it's super good you can blow. So we've inflated this thing quite a bit and now I'm really trying to thin out that area that's right off the tip of the pipe because here in just a moment we're going to put in what we call a jack line. So you're going to see me take my tool called the jacks these big kind of tweezer tools that I have and we're going to put a small line right off the tip of the pipe that's going to be where we're going to disconnect it from the pipe a little bit later in the process when we have to transfer this to a different pipe. You want that area to be very thin so that it breaks very evenly and easily you know if it's too thick it's it might break the piece you're going to get weird kind of cracks in different places so it's a lot about thinning that area out so that we can put a good line in there and the thinner the glass is not too thin but the thinner the glass is usually you get a better break. Sweet. So this thing's blown up pretty well and now we're going to use our cork paddles so I want this to be a flat piece in the end so Will's going to flip back and forth and he's going to use his hand to cap the pipe so we don't lose any air through the end of the blow pipe and I'm going to use these wooden or sorry these cork paddles to kind of flatten the piece out so we're going to go through this process quite a bit of flipping and flattening and flipping and flattening. Go again. Take one more All right sweet so this thing's pretty flat it's basically the shape I wanted I love using those cork paddles you know the smell of cork burning cork is always kind of cool to me I don't know why I like it so much but it's a really cool smell and you know it always creates all the smoke and fire it's just a bunch of fun to use. So now you can see we're heating up the very tip of the piece because we're going to start to put a bottom on it we need a flat spot so that it can sit evenly on the table so Will's going to use the Taglio this metal tool right here to start to kind of compress it down so we can get a really nice flat bottom. That looks much better all right sweet I think that we are ready for a punty. Just a dome punty is fine. So now the bottom's nice and established and we're going to go for our transfer that we talked about a little bit earlier so I'm cooling down the bottom you can see it's still kind of hot and Will is going to go get the next pipe we're going to transfer it to and he'll get a little bit of glass right off the tip a nice pointy little piece of glass this is what we call the punty so in a moment I'm going to stab this onto the bottom and I'm going to make sure that it's directly on the bottom we want it to be nice and symmetrical whenever it's flipped over so we want this to be just bullseye in the middle it's a difficult move because that little piece of glass is very hot so I need to make sure that it's not so hot that the piece is going to flop back and forth when we break it off the blow pipe and we don't want it to be too cold to where it breaks so it's kind of like a balancing act at this point but here in just a moment once it's cooled down I'm going to add a few drops of water to that connection point right where we wanted to break our jack line and then I'll be able to tap the pipe and it should break off perfectly if I did my job right yeah there we go it starts sticking up all right sweet so that went great and now that punty is pretty hot so I have a small amount of time to make sure this thing is nice and even and it's not like off to an angle or something you really want to make sure it's nice and symmetrical before that punty locks up on you and it locks up pretty quick and now we're going to worry about the lip of the piece so that piece is really thick glass from where it was connected to the pipe so I'm going to try to thin it out and we're going to actually trim it we're going to get rid of a lot of that thick glass that's on the end so we're going to heat it up and you'll see me use my tweezers to kind of pull it out and make it a little bit longer and then when it's to the right length and the right thickness we're going to break it off and get rid of all the excess glass all right awesome so we trimmed it pretty well that move's called a jack and crack that's what I've always heard there's different ways of getting rid of the glass the excess glass on the lip but that one's called a jack and crack and now from here on out we're just going to worry about shaping this thing up to its final shape I lost a little bit of glass so kind of like a chunk off the tip whenever we broke it off and that's okay it happens sometimes so what we're going to do is we're just going to heat it up and really try to melt it back down to where it's nice so this is kind of the last final move we're just going to hold it vertical and try to get it a little bit uh you know flatter so I'm just going to use these cork paddles get the final kind of shape and then we'll basically be done all right awesome so this thing's all done basically we're not going to kind of change the shape anymore and the last thing we have to do is disconnect it from the pipe and move it to our annealer so it can cool overnight so I'm going to add some water to that connection point and in just a second I'm going to give the pipe a tap it'll fall into Will's Kevlar gloves and we'll be able to move it into our oven so it can cool all right sweet and here's the final result um I love these marini patterns they always are so breathtaking they're so pretty uh you know I don't do a lot of marini I enjoy cane work maybe just a little bit more just because there's so much depth and how much you can do with these pieces there's so much to marini but this piece is available for purchase if anyone's interested in buying it you can find a link to it in the description box down below and guys thanks again for watching I appreciate you guys so much I love making these videos I really hope you guys enjoy them too uh be safe out there we'll catch you in the next one