Just amazing.....

[Kalorlo]

Oh wow! I love the tractor and the coach and horses 

[Ian Pearson]

Appreciate feedback so big thanks for that. Photos dont really give idea of size. Cinders coach and horses is about 14 inches long. Others average over 12 inches. My fav is the tractor and made a few. about 8 inches long, mostly blown from 36mm dia tubing. Body blown first and shaped using carbon paddles. Large wheels blown with tread "layered" on using 4mm rod, have to ensure tread for each wheel goes opposite each other. Small wheels blown as a pair using 14mm dia tubing. Mudguards and exhaust from 9mm rod. Parts made before and annealed. Final act is to warm up body and fuse on mudguards using small piercing flame, then large wheels careful not to tack wheels and mudguards. Ideally leaving 1mm gap. Using small flame means can make sure no sharp joins. Next join on small wheels and exhaust. using a bushy flame to keep whole item warm in between sperate tasks. A tube attached to back of tractor acts as handle and can be removed when whole thing cold. Whole job takes about an hour, maybe less if making more than one.

Hope this is of interest

Ian

[garishglobes]

An hour to someone with a lot of skill, I think...

...and just how do you hold a hot glass tractor 8 inches long while attaching all these bits?? Very interesting to read how they are put together, it must take a lot of forward planning.

[Ian Pearson]

Sometimes the skill is as much about knowing what not to learn as it is trying to learn everything. My early years were spent practicing joins, pulling points etc. and say 100 basic techniques. the next 40+ years I have used the same techniques, just in varied orders. Very rarely do I learn a new technique as I am content in applying a technique I know but perhaps in a different perspective. One of my early mentors told me that learning about glassworking was rather like learning the alphabet, some learn just enough letters to get by, maybe A to F, some learn all the letters A - Z and some just want to learn more and more letters, more than ever existed, beyond Z etc.. Of course there are more letters in different alphabets but that's another subject.

As for the tractor then in making the body I have previously joined a length, say 10 inches of 10mm dia tubing to some 36 mm tubing after the "rough" shape has been formed. I hold this handle in my left hand as I work the Glass body, with my right hand apply the extra glass and adding more shapes, details with various tools. As above my tools are simple, tweezers, carbon and sometimes the edge of a metal ruler to indent the hot glass.

Ian

[garishglobes]

The Hungarian language has 44 letters, almost all of them capable of making a word unpronouncable, at least to me!
Cambodian, at 72 letters, is apparently the longest alphabet.

I suspect it might take a lifetime, or a very special person, to be able to speak fluently in both Hungarian and Cambodian.

Sorry, sidetracked...

[fionaess]

The Hungarian language has 44 letters, almost all of them capable of making a word unpronouncable, at least to me!
Cambodian, at 72 letters, is apparently the longest alphabet.

I suspect it might take a lifetime, or a very special person, to be able to speak fluently in both Hungarian and Cambodian.

Sorry, sidetracked...

Bet Cambodian boro workers have a lot of techniques then ... at least 72? 

[flaming beads]

Lol...that's great info!!...but as they say..."learn something new and you forget something old"!!...poop!!