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This morning, early this morning. We left at 05:00 for Portland (Oregon that is) , about a 175 mile jaunt to the Uroboros Glass plant. The purpose was to pick out glass for the Tiffany-style lamp shade class. About a dozen of us made the trip down and back. Boy what a fantastic place. We got to watch them make some ring mottle in reds and assorted colors. Sorry but no photographs please. What we did see was young men taking gathers from three furnaces and put it on a steel table, then almost out of sight we could see someone taking a big gather of mixed glass and knead it a few times. Then it went through a roller like pasta dough and lit on another table to cool for a minute, then pulled onto a conveyor through some torches. At the outfall of the conveyor the glass had cooled enough to be put on a light table and be inspected for some 21 types of flaws. Then the two wavy sides were cut and the piece sized and put in the proper bin for shelving. Boy I sure would have liked to get a box of those wavy off-cuts but they went into a scrap bin to be recycled, probably into"decorative" glass stuff that you see in landscaping now and then. The inventory of ring mottles was mind boggling, and all the rest, the streaky, confetti, granite and others, and an amazing drapery that was probably 2 inches high. The Spectrum plant was nothing like this. I only picked out two half sheets and one quarter sheet. Like a kid in a candy store. Wish I had picked out a couple more sheets, but you know how spendy that ring mottle can be! I'm anxiously awaiting tomorrow's delivery to the shop that is giving the class. Wow! what a treat this was, and the folks down there were so very nice.
