BUBBLES? DO YOU SEE BUBBLES?

There has been talk that the glass manufactured by Oceanside has more bubbles in it than when it was manufactured at Spectrum. In April, I was at the Glass and Bead Show in Vegas and the Retailer Association I belong to, met the representatives of Oceanside during the event. I sort of remembered that they said something about no buying the big furnace that was at Spectrum, so their continuous ribbon was different. I was wondering if that was causing the bubbles. I went back to my retailer group and asked what they remembered about the conversation. These are some of the answers I got. “It wouldn't be caused by annealing, just like fusing bubbles are trapped at higher temps. The annealing tunnels are just slowly lowering the temp, removing stress, and making the glass user friendly. Their glass used to be relatively bubble free. At some point, maybe in the late 90's or early 2000's because of the cost of natural gas, they converted part of the process (I may have these backwards, or wrong) to an oxygen/gas mixture. It caused one of the first significant brand wide price increases I remember. Base retail went from 4.25 to 5.95. I bet someone else remembers those details better. There was also a large amount of glass going to china, being made into lamps. It was said, that the glass was too perfect making people think they were purchasing a plastic lamp. Who knows if that was part of a decision, or in any way historically true.” I just re-watched the first 10 minutes of Vince’s presentation. He talks about them not buying the continuous furnace, that they are using a day tank. I think they are saying the day tank is now the continuous ribbon and that is different than hand rolled. “Tom Giles (rip) once told me KOG could eliminate almost all bubbles (& therefore surface pits) if he could hold the batch longer in the furnace (usually just a day longer). But he was not allowed to because of the expense of gas”. I guess we still don’t know why, but we do know there are more pits in the glass. In fusing this will not matter but it will in stained glass.