When it comes to starting production, or just simply practicing in the studio, its important to know different methods of separating your glass material. Your needs may call for different approaches on how you want them cut. This miniseries aims to explain and show you how to implement different techniques in the studio for glassblowing.
In this video, we talk about, and shows you three different methods to cut glass in a glass blowing studio. The route you choose to take depends on your glass needs. The first of three methods is using a diamond saw to separate your material. Here at Purr, we use an Apollo Gemini diamond wet ringsaw. This blade abrades the glass away, and will not cut skin since it has no sharp edges. Simply, and slowly, push your material through the saw and it will abrade all the way through, leaving you with your separated material. This method requires you to clean the glass after cutting, however, since the abrasion process produces glass dust, mixed with the water, which will form an almost cement-like coat around the glass. The second method for cutting glass is using a carbide scoring blade. This blade is stronger than glass and leaves a fine scored line in the material, which the heated punty will cause the glass to crack along. Score your glass as perfectly around as possible, so that the breaking process forms a clean separation. After scoring, take a glass rod, or punty, and heat it up red hot. Once the material can move, firmly press the hot punty onto the scored section of the glass. This will shock the glass and cause stress or cracking along the scored line. Carefully detach the punty, and if the tubing has not separated yet, you can tap it lightly against a flat surface, or you can carefully break them apart with your hands. This method leaves a clean break, which requires no clean up, and is workable immediately. The third technique you can use to cut glass is flame cutting. This is the fastest method, because you are using a torch to immediately separate your glass, and the material is already hot, making it readily workable. Set your torch to a needle flame and evenly rotate your glass where you want to separate it. When the glass comes apart, you can take a needle nose plier and grab the excess off the end. You can place the worked end of the glass tubing into the torch and blow into the opposite side to open it up, and allowing you to use a graphite reamer to fully open the end, and finish the separation. All of these methods are great ways to break down your glass, but the technique you choose depends on what you need your glass for.
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