How Marbles Are Made!

hello friends and welcome back to the channel in this episode i invite you to join us as we explore how machine made marbles are produced here at the dave's appalachian squirrels marble factory we're here with linda moore streaming in transfer west virginia and we're doing a new das run right what's the name of the run [Music] andy davis celebration yeah cool this is our striking glass [Music] what do you call these and this will be a one day marble run lasting about nine consecutive hours the base glass for this run we'll start out with an opaque white colored at first and later a clear color will be added every hour or so we are using about 1 000 pounds of total glass color in this run because the world watches hello [Music] this tank is approximately 280 cubic square feet and it's raised up high enough so that it's positioned above the business end of the marble machine this tank is built with furnace brick or fire brick which can handle extremely high temperatures there's a slight pitch on the bottom of the inside of the tank and as the base collet is shoveled into the back door it begins to melt and it works its way downstream to where the orifice is located at the front a steady stream of molten glass drains at the orifice where they get cut into glowing little glass slugs optimal marble making glass temperatures are approximately 2500 scorching degrees fahrenheit [Music] how hot is it in here it's uh it's kind of hot two thousand degrees in the tank right fifteen hundred when it comes our production estimation for this machine is roughly four marbles per second which is about 240 marbles a minute there are two cutting shears slicing back and forth here at a furious pace and the size of the marbles is determined by the speed of the glass flow versus the speed of the cutting arm action and these marbles are coming in at about a plump 21 30 seconds of an inch the glass slugs are thrown into two tubes which direct them onto the forming screws and the glass solidifies quickly here as they're shaped into round marbles by the rotating screws they continue down the track and roll under some cooling fans and are met by our quality control crew at the sorting stations the very first marbles out of the tank and down the run are referred to as tank wash marbles and they're going to be undecorated plain jane marbles that just show the base glass color and then right away detail specialist jim storsberg begins decorating the marbles with frit glass with specialized hand tools right at the rollers and aventurine lines right before the cutting shears at the orifice so now we're getting some very cool marbles with a variety of surface decorations coming in but how are the primary marble swirls produced i haven't the foggiest idea okay but seriously the main swirl patterns that you see in the marbles are added directly into the furnace at swirl glass ports with different color combinations let's watch dis owner and glass master dave mcculloch as he demonstrates the process today is breaking down some premium cut here into bite-sized chunks and he's prepared this color combination here for this leg of the run so he's got a bright pink a yellowy burmese glass which is highly uv reactive and a transparent red color you gotta light the place up the door goes open and in goes a few pounds of color a few scoops of each color so some scoops are positioned far across to the other side of the orifice and some are dropped right near the port and this colored glass won't mix in with the base glass here like it might if you were working with paints they'll melt down and create their own distinct stream and they'll work their way down into the orifice if you look at this photo of the inside of the tank you can see how stream channels begin to form in the tank floor and this is where the glass is moving the quickest and this is basically how separate swirls are created in some of your favorite marbles all right so let's check out how this color combination came out that's the burmese flash that's incredible it hasn't looked without the black light so what happened to the yellowy burmese well it burned out into a creamy white color but it glows a loud lime green under uv light and the other color stayed true these gorgeous glowers were nicknamed sarah marbles by linda moore simmons they were named after her granddaughter [Music] what i'm like i hope they're not hot thank you [Music] good guy that's just terrible what do you call those that's what i call cranberry based cranberries made them on 7 16. oh wow they're brand new is this a run i just ran just you know trying to cranberry base yeah yeah and the cranberry come out but as you know they're beautiful but they stay dark yeah man that's absolutely stunning what are you going to call cranberry just cranberry base all right cranberry baby [Music] back at the sorting stations there's still plenty of work to do the damaged marbles are picked out and put into discard buckets and some of the choice marbles are hand selected to be later divided up between the investors at the end of the run okay you know if something yep you don't get it right and that's the premium bucket right right that one right there stands out to me that one right there it turned out to me a little bit the marbles sit staged at the gates until they're all quickly looked over and then they all get spilled into pails and they're kept covered with insulation so it's to keep them from cooling too quickly and possibly getting a kneeling fracture like i'm 10 years old again yeah yeah picking out cherries you're scary marbles are still dangerously hot here and you can see how dull the colors appear in the sorting stage it takes about 15 minutes for a scoop of swirl color color to melt down and join into the stream of glass and it takes about another 24 hours for the glass to fully cool and cure to where the colors are bright and true when each pail is filled they get picked up and dumped into 65 gallon drums and they'll cool there overnight actually they rotate and they go around and they just mix them up right and on his 90th birthday his daughter made him [Music] and this is the man of the hour mr andy davis andy and his brother jim are well known for their outstanding contemporary handmade marbles and andy makes these wicked little spinning top sets out of the discard glass from david's marble runs and here's one in action and this is a view of the support car base for the forming screw section of the machine and you can see it's built on wheels that will roll like a little mini railroad train and at the end of the run the tracks pivot away and the base is rolled forward and away from the stream of glass [Music] the orifice then gets plugged with a wooden dowel and the fuel is shut down [Music] and the hot work stays is done and the pride of pennsboro pauses to take a bow [Applause] the next morning the investors return to roll out the drums and give the marbles another thorough mix the drums are then emptied into packing boxes and are carefully weighed and put into numbered lots the shareholders then draw numbers to claim their lots this was an extended run yielding 60 20 pound boxes a very rough estimate would be about 150 000 total marbles produced here are some close-up photos of some of the different marble styles for the run and this is the fabulous signature andy davis marble some of the better examples had brilliant chunks of glittering gold luts it's an instant classic i'd like to thank the entire cast of awesome characters for their help in this video i hope you enjoyed the show and as always thank you for watching vintage machine made marbles

Channel: Stephen Bahr

Views: 1,875,687

Keywords: How marbles are made, How to make marbles, Marbles

Id: M4Pe-w9vXhg

Length: 10min 20sec (620 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 19 2022