Mold Cavity Half-Leaf Repair Marks

[Just Dig it]

You did that saratoga justice in those pics red ..well taken.. when i first posted it on here before red and i made a trade i had mentioned it looked as if the inside of the repair had denim pressed in it..if it was a patch of glass..why would the letters still be there?

 

[GuntherHess]

Seems what they are saying is the gather touched the side of the mold and made a cooled spot on it which blew in a deformed way.
This seems to reinforce the idea that these marks are not a function of damaged molds or something which was done to the bottle after being blown.
I'm not sure it rules out the idea of the gather being pinched in the mold. These art glass people are not working at the fast pace of 19th century piece-work glass blowers so they are not likely to experience that type of error.

 

[tigue710]

by bubble is he reffering to the slightly expanded gather? Or a bubble in the glass. i find what he is saying a little confusing...

At the same time his second explaination sounds exactly like what we are talking about...

 

[baltbottles]

The reply from Corning looks like good evidence to support the idea of the errors being caused by the blowing process rather then a repair to the mold.

Matt brings up a good point about the speed at which the art glass blowers work compared to the industrial blowers of the mid 19th century. I would think this is good evidence to support the idea of the fin being produce while closing the mold around the gather.

Also if one of the Admin gets a chance how about moving this thread to the bottle side of chat?

Chris

 

[RED Matthews]

Hello to all of you, I really appreciate all of your imput - each and every one will be studied and re-evaluated, for any clue or help explaining this type of mark. I am confident that it is some type of repair procedure and it just hasn't been addressed with any explanation in all the books I have read.
I know that the gather of glass is bubbled enough to start the neck of a bottle and I know the accumulated gathers of glass are placed on top of that first puffed glass until they have enough gathered glass to make the bottle they are in the process of making. That partially formed mass of glass, has to be expanded and shaped into the required parison shape to give the end bottle correct distribution of glass thickness in the action of the final blow.
In the case of the EXCELLSIOR half-leaf the bottle when the final blow to put the glass to wall of the final blow mold the glass formed with a very thick zone vertical with its center of the half-leaf form. This tells me that the thermal conductivity of the welded form in the mold, was reduced enough to form a thicher zone inside the bottle.
I took it with me to the Dentist today to have them take a picture inside the bottle - it was washed out by all the light in the end of their wand lens. My next try will be with a fiber optic camera devise.
In the cavity of the half-leaf in the black glass SARATOGA "/ A " SPRING bottle there is a thicher amount of glass inside the bottle form when it was blown against the contact surface of the mold.. This again tells me that the existance of the weld has a much different temperature thermal conductivity than the rest of the mold and this condition caused the thicker glass inside the bottle.

If any of you men (or women) find a shard of this condition - please let me know. Some of you who have shown pictures of this condition. Take a piece of coat hanger wire and feel insid the bottle. I am sure you will feel the thickness of the glass wall.

I have to admit that I have NO real idea of how they welded in the repair metal or what kind of welding rod they used. There just has not been any recorded explantion of their method of repair. I am sure they used rods of the same mold iron to do it. How they did it is not known.

When I worked in mold engineering and development we studied the different thermal conductivity of different metals. This was all done to evaluate the difference in the created smoothness of the glass product. We had molds made for a plain wine bottle that were made of Kelly Mold Iron #4, Binney DV bronze, Binney 51C iron, Nodular iron and unchilled type A graphite gray iron. The operaiional comparrison of the galss surfaces were obviously affected by the mold temperatures, in the operation. These molds were put on an Emhart IS Automatic Bottle Machine; There was two molds of each metal. The Binney DV bronze made the smoothest bottle. The unchilled type A graphite mold iron - created a good example of the COLD MOLD RIPPLE in the glass. The Kelly #4 mold iron made good bottles. The Binney 51C was not a good metal to use, it ran too hot; when this test was run we also sat bottles out on the hot end floor for cord stress test. The bottle from the Binney 51C mold broke first from the cords in the glass. This test also evaluated the skin condition of the bottle and the Binney DV metal prorved to be the best there also.

Years later when I was into selling the application of Dameron's HR metal for other parts of the mold equpment, The Ball Glass Corporation ran a machine of baby food mold equipment, where we supplied our metals for all of the metal parts that touched the hot glass. It was a great success and I heard that Ball was recognized by Gerber for the success of their glass. This metal gave all of the baby food jar the best of bottle surface evaluations.

Now this summer I have made arrangements to go to Corinings Museum, Wheatons Museum and maybe the National Bottle Museum in Balston Spa, NY. In each case these mold repair samples will be discussed.

I guess when we know enough, we will be able to put this phenomenon to bed; hopefully knowing, some of the answers regarding to how it was done and why.

I siscerely thatnk all of you for your opinions and interest. RED Matthews

 

[westernbittersnut]

Red,

I will be very interested to hear the results of your inquiry of this subject by them. On another subject, since your going to be speaking to these folks. I have always wanted to know how the lettering was done in these iron moulds. My wife who is a calligrapher and has taught this for some time, does not think it possible that the embossing in the iron moulds was "carved out or chiseled out" by hand. There are many examples where there is one letter that is either backwards or upside down. My thinking is that each letter was made [sort of like a scrabble piece] and then set into a machined slot in the mould. I'm talking before the invention of the detachable slug plate invention I think. However when you look at the Wheaton Cultural Centers booklet that they put out, called Into the Mould in 1993 I think, there is an original Old Sachems Bitters and Wigwam Tonic bottle mould, and you can see the embossed lettering, which looks way to neatly made to have been done by a chisel and and by hand. Any thoughts on this subject would be welcomed.

 

[baltbottles]

If anyone reading this has an unembossed bottle with this type of error I would be interested in buying it so I can cut it in half and post pictures of the error in cross section.

Chris

 

[GuntherHess]

My thinking is that each letter was made [sort of like a scrabble piece] and then set into a machined slot in the mould.

I dont know exactly how they added embossing. I always assumed they did it with hard chissels. The idea of fixed sized letters being "type set" doesnt seem to match many of the early bottles. There are several I can think of where the text starts evenly spaced but ends up all smashed together as the engraver realized they were running out of room. It was very easy to add backwards letters. Remember they were adding the letters as a mirror image. Just try to write backwards sometimes[]

 

[RED Matthews]

Hi to Guntherjhess and baltbottles: I just had another man from the west coast ask me about letter cutting - so I sent him a PM. I will have to see if I can go back to in - copy it and paste it off to you both. I have a started blog for my homepage but it isn't done yet. Back later! RED Matthews

I just realized that it was westernbittersnut in the post before yours, that I sent the PM to.
Oh well, I am still learning about how to get around in this forum. RED

 

[baltbottles]

Red,

We can debate this until the cows come home. But it’s starting to get old. I have seen this type of error in cross section and it clearly shows two separate layers of glass. Until you have seen a cross section of this you can not say you know everything about this error because you haven't see it from all possible angles.

If these were created by a mold repair it would not cause there to be two separate layers of glass. That’s plain simple common sense. Because the defect in the glass would be limited to only the surface of the bottle. Two layers indicate that the defect was created by two pieces of glass overlapping something that would not happen if this were caused by a mold repair.

As far as I'm concerned I believe you need to open your mind to the idea that you could be wrong. I am one to admit I can be mistaken however this is one time I’m sure I am not.

The only way this could be proven either way is to make some molds and have some bottles blown. You with you repair and mine using the simple pinch that is folded over. Besides I’m sure it would have been far easier to fix other mold mistakes and damages if it was possible to weld patch metal into molds. But on all early bottles I have seen patches are riveted in not welded.

Chris