Today I finally made some real progress on the Glass Flute front, and hauled home the heaviest part of this Gorton P1-2 Pantographic Milling Machine. Its currently sitting in the rental truck, parked facing away from our walkway. Tomorrow morning I am hoping a few friends show up and we can at least slide it down the ramp onto our walkway where I can secure it from the weather, covering it up, and return the truck to U-Haul before snows arrive.
I am hoping to get my roofer’s wife’s sister’s husband’s brother Jaime here with his Bobcat loader next week. With it we should be able to move it up to my workshop, leaving it on a temporary floor outside that I’ll pound together first thing. I will then be able to slide it in on 3/4” delrin rollers. We’ll probably carry the other heavy pieces currently sitting inside in my entryway as well, using the bucket. The pantograph arms are especially heavy and awkward
This machine will be set up with a fairly slow speed lathe on the bed seen in the picture above. Glass will be previously bored out or cast/blown with a bore, and ground on a tapered cast iron mandrel rotating at slow speed with a carbide grit slurry and finished to bore profile to about 300grit, using pumice for a final finish. The glass is then mounted between centers on the lathe mounted to the mill bed. On the spindle of the mill will be a 180 grit bronze sintered diamond wheel. The position of the wheel will be determined by the stylus on the pantograph following a trace, and will grind the outside shape concentric with the bore. As I get closer to setting up the process will be more obvious. The final grinds are done with a 25 micron wheel leaving the glass ready to finish.
This weekend I plan to layout a path for the 3 different ways I generate the glass: blowing into a mold, casting, or using direct industrial cold working techniques. I want to chart out all of the steps and estimate what I will need for tooling and supplies. I am getting close. I am also finishing up a fundraising letter to send to my previous clients to fund my R&D. Its nice to have all of my “long queue” work such as keyed flute orders from before the Pandemic out the door (having a long queue is something like having long covid) and focusing on the glass flute work as my main focus.
It hasn’t been so easy however. Working with more-or-less teammates has its challenge, for someone who has mostly worked alone for the last 40 years. I had to break all contact with one of the people involved in this project, partly due to his insistent and commonly offensive Marjorie Taylor Greene -flavored political views, and his strong stance against vaccinations. He has some amazing flute data; but this remains inaccessible to me due to his unvaccinated status. Finally he threatened to use his VIP status to bend some rules which could affect others lives and livelihoods, and this is the final straw what caused his expulsion. I am still putting out fires from this, from those who don’t yet fully understand that I had no alternative. I have no desire to work with someone who threatens to use a forged vaccine card! The brazen use of these by the unvaccinated has become quite the problem for travel agents, and generally adds to the Pandemic’s duration and misery. See https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2021/10/18/fake-vaccine-card-travel/
Please get vaccinated if you haven’t. Garlic (a close unvaccinated relative of mine’s preferred preventative and cure), Ivermectin, and other alternative remedies will not protect you in the least - and it will be too late when they are stuffing the tube down your throat to ask for the vaccine. Its unclear how aggressive the new Omicron variant will be, even for the fully vaccinated and boostered. Thus masking, social distancing and isolating oneself and avoiding indoor social activities such as concerts, dining in restaurants and more remains important and necessary. I suspect that anti-vax attitudes and hoping for herd immunity in lieu of vaccinations will keep us in this pandemic for a few extra and unnecessary years, if not another decade or more! This virus mutates fast enough like the Flu that this year’s vaccines and herd immunities will be useless next year. Thus the need for all to fight this with the best tools available - if we were largely vaccinated this could stop it finally, according to the epidemiologists. Yet a huge percentage of Americans remain unvaccinated, swayed by mostly right-winged political beliefs and television charlatans. Much of the rest of the world could be vaccinated with enough political will. Unfortunately these mostly Trump followers are biting at our heels and otherwise doing what they can elsewhere to take away rights from minorities and women. For what gain, except autocratic power? Its insane and we frankly do not have the time for them and their insanity!
For my research, any trips to see the collection at the Library of Congress remains on hold. I need to measure, if nothing else there, the flute that Madison theoretically owned. Its unclear if this was indeed the case:
See https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2018/10/the-mystery-of-james-madisons-crystal-flute/
An important result of last week’s crisis is that it forced me to consider what I am doing. I don’t necessarily feel compelled to monetize my product - I have better ways of doing that. A simple life of spending a week every month to generate 5-6 of my simple Folk Flutes to sell retail sounds lovely, and is more than enough to sustain us, without having to deal with dramas and difficult personalities. Researching and developing these glass flutes has been stimulating. But there may be those who might conspire in one way or another to thwart my enthusiasm. Why should I even have such headwinds? Unfortunately there are always some mean spirited types who derive their enjoyment bringing others down. Many of them are doing their best to impede a science-based solution to the Pandemic.
I basically want to pioneer or recreate these methods for making glass flutes, and then teach about these methods, and maybe only make a few flutes a year - exploring what can be done in a modern sense with the glass and flute design, and leaving the exact copy business to those with who are more motivated to copy the originals. I have never been one for that sort of thing which is why I have stayed away from the Baroque and Renaissance instrument business, and even avoided making good copies of Rudall and Rose flutes, etc! I would like to do with these glass flutes what my friend the great and inspiring luthier Fred Carlsen has done with his amazing, wild and wonderful guitar sculptures.
Laurent really had a limited palette of glass available, with the majority of it either clear leaded crystal or a simple soda-lime glass. A few flutes were cast in a cobalt blue composition, and a few of the latest ones were made from a green “Uranium” glass. Compare that with the color palettes and degrees of transparency available (and combinations of) at Bullseye Glass or Olympic Color Rods and one can immediately perceive the possibilities. Such glasses were possible - just never applied by Laurent except maybe for end cap decorations.
Olympic Color Rods is just across Puget Sound not far from Dusty Strings in the Fremont District, famous for the sculptures Waiting for the Interurban and the Fremont Troll. One of our favorite relatives Ina Bray had a hand in these sculptures as the chair of the King County Arts Commission. I love browsing the confusing shelves full of glass rods at Olympic. Some are leaded glasses and some are not. These come fully annealed apparently, and can be used with the direct cold working methods that I am tooling up for, and expect to be using by the beginning of the year.
Lead is an additive used to lower the melting point of glass, and also to increase its cold working capabilities when cutting on the engraving wheel. Montserrat Gascon, one of the top researchers on the flutes of Laurent, just sent me a copy of her recent research on the composition of the materials used on the original Laurent glass flutes, using her 5 keyed specimen from 1823 - see Material characterization and functional implications of a Claude Laurent glass flute; H. Bagán, G. Magkanas, M. Gascón, J.F. García; Microchemical Journal V.155, see www.elsevier.com/locate/microc (2020) (If interested I can send a copy - email me).
Apparently the flutes in leaded crystal survive better than the ones in a simple soda-lime glass. A process somewhat similar to the way honey crystallizes called Devitrification where the glass literally disintegrates into its component sands and salts is much more common in the soda-lime glasses than the leaded glasses. Its wreaking havoc in some collections. Fortunately leaded crystal glass is widely available for a modern copy. But is it safe to use?
I need to research whether it is safe to be around leaded glass in an industrial setting. Does exposure to lead occur from simply handling this material, being potentially exposed to dusts (usually one avoids exposure to dusts with all glass work due to the potential for silicosis!)? Do fumes come off from hot working (glass blowing or casting)? Or does all this lead stay entirely within solution?
Apparently moisture from a player is enough to begin the disintegration of some glasses. Some of this reaction may come from the way glass is handled as it gools towards the annealing range. If its held too long at 1250F devitrification will frequently occur. The glass that I can use for cold working may or may not have been rushed through that temperature range. Also, I wonder what time scale is involved. Is this a matter of decades or a century or longer?
The types of glass used for culinary purposes tends towards the simpler compositions such as Pyrex, and certainly work around moisture. The problem is that these glasses which form the mainstay of the “glass lathe” or “Borosilicate” glass working community, do not come art-glass forms such as the above, and feature a much narrower color palette, in terms of solid colors. Also the indexes of refraction seem to be shallower and just do not look right to my eyes, compared with the glasses used historically. I would still like to collect some bottle glass and melt it however, and work it into flute bodies. If that is possible.
I have much to research and many new techniques to learn, and rapidly get up to speed.
Apparently the metal has different compositions on a Laurent flute too, depending upon where and how it was used. The keys were fairly high silver in content, up to 96%. The ferrules however, were made from bronze and then silver plated by covering with amalgam, and then roasting off the mercury. The raised rings were made from tin/antinomy and applied later. My copies of these will be similar in shape, but all cast in stering silver with a tiny but of germanium imparted for tarnish resistance. The silver is roasted at 300C after casting and cooled slowly, rendering it hard enough for the task, especially sockets. This will polish up and look nice - but a close look compared with the original will show some significant difference in color and shade. Again, it boils down to how historically authentic one wants to be and trying to finesse the metal to be historically accurate in every possible way seems like too much (and I do not want to breathe hazardous Mercury fumes!). I would rather simplify and leave that to others where it matters to them. Once covered with a century of dust and fly shit, these metals will hardly be distinguishable. Apparently the ones owned by Napoleon and his brother, currently on display at the Metropolitan Museum, are suddenly badly tarnished. Opening the museum per Covid required circulating much more outside air throughout the museum to keep people safer. This air from 5th Avenue is highly corrosive. I worry what is happening to the rest of the Museum’s vast treasures on display!
So I got the mill out of my friend Robert’s workshop today, only a few months late. Getting it the last 50m to my workshop will be its own challenge. Tomorrow the big challenge is getting it out of the truck and down the ramp onto our walkway and no farther. Fortunately Nancy and I will be joined by our friends Paul and Nat and we will get it off without injury or damage.
Friday night chuckle for you to enjoy: