There's all sorts of different flames that you need to learn when you're working over
the torch.
A yellow flame is a cooler heat and as you increase the oxygen the flame turns blue.
The temperature is probably a few thousand degrees Fahrenheit.
It's really interesting working with glass because my experience with glass is that it's
solid and then when I was introduced to glass blowing all of a sudden it's not a solid anymore.
It's a liquid and then it almost feels like honey in between your hands.
For liquids there isn't a structural order but when a liquid freezes it does get a solid
crystalline structure and that's what's so unique about glass is that it never has crystalline
structure whether it's in its molten state or whether it's in its solid state.
I'm a proud member of the American Scientific Glass Blower Society creating custom scientific
glassware for research and discovery chemistry.
We make some pretty wild stuff, extractors, reactors, condensers, custom flasks and it
can't be made by a machine or mass produced.
Scientific glass blowing has seen some decline over the years because of the way industry
changes, the way that chemists run reactions and also the advancement in plastics.
A few decades ago there were a few thousand people in the society and now there are under
a thousand people but the scientists still need that one-on-one interaction between the
chemists and the glassblower to get the glassware that they need for their research.
Most days I get home from work and go to my shop and make the artistic glass.
I get just as excited about scientific glass as I do artistic glass.
The whole process is beautiful to me.
The idea of blowing glass was developed I believe in Persia a few thousand years ago
and we're still using the same basic principles.
We work over open flames and manipulate the glass to get the shape that we want.
You can get a very intricate detail and I really like focusing on the tiny details.
One of the things that I get the most enjoyment out of is trying to come up with new ideas,
seeing what's possible and what isn't possible.
For the animal series that I make there's a really interesting technique involved in
actually getting that animal inside of the glass.
I haven't seen anyone else do anything like it before.
I grew up on a small farm and as a kid we would walk around and find arrowheads.
I used to look at these arrowheads and think about the guy who was making them, like maybe
there was one guy who was the best arrowhead maker and people would come from miles away
to get arrowheads from this one craftsman.
I feel like I'm connected to that in some way to just focus on one skill and get good
at what you do.
