Oct/Nov Privy dig in Upstate NY

[CazDigger]

Hi Red, I have seen these repairs before on Saratoga bottles, esp Congress & Empire from the later Congressville Glassworks, but also a few from the earlier Mt Pleasant Glassworks. There is an example of the super rare blue 1/2 Gallon pontiled Wynkoops Sarsaparilla For The Blood that has this too. Here are the only two I have in my collection, AL Edic Utica Bottling Establishment iron pontil, circa 1850s. I tend to agree with the 'flap of glass" theory on these as it appears that the glass in this location sticks out on some the bottles beyond where the mold would have contacted the bottle, just my 2cents.

 

[Just Dig it]

Them be Monsters Caz.....Those look like the half leafs..ive seen one up close..do those have a denim like texture to the area in question?

 

[sandchip]

This will just have to be an "agree to disagree" matter. I'll never buy the repair theory unless somebody finds a picture of it being performed or old writings by an old glassblower outlining that procedure. Why go to the trouble to repair a blowout when knocking the bottle off the blowpipe into the pot or cullet pile, and getting a new gather would be much faster than fashioning a repair which just happens to always look the same, like a gather pinched between closing mold halves, which were reopened, the gather repositioned (rotated), mold closed and bottle blown? The "flap" had cooled somewhat, so that when it is flattened against the gather inside the mold, is too stiff to sufficiently fill any lettering cut into the mold. Another giveaway is the thickness of the glass surrounding the "repair". If a blowout occurred, then why is the glass so thick around the area of the hole?

 

[CazDigger]

I don't claim to know for sure what this is, but here are my observations: The 1/2 leaf is away from the mold seam, so I don't think it is from glass leaked thru the seam. The leaf does have a texture that is like denim as Just Dig It asked, and is different than the rest of the bottle exterior. As I said before, sometimes the flap or whatever you call it sticks out from the rest of the bottle somewhat. If the mold itself was repaired, there would be several bottles with the exact same defect in the exact same place on the bottle, and this is not the case, each one appears unique. Some glasshouses, like those in Saratoga, seem to have a lot of these defects. I agree that it doesn't seem likely that in a "production line" setting where speed and efficiency are critical that they would spend a lot of time to fix a bottle when they could just write it off and make another one. That is my argument when people refer to "refired" pontils on utilitarian items like bottles, why waste time with an extra step in the process. Art glass and fancy items like decanters are another story though. Maybe if there was a special tool and it could be done quickly that it would be worthwhile, I don't know?????

 

[sandchip]

Like I said, they realized the gather was pinched between mold halves (not leaked), opened the mold, and repositioned (rotated) the gather, hence its location away from the mold seam. Once again, look at the glass thickness in these spots.

 

[CazDigger]

Hi Jimbo, your theory seems plausible now that I understand what you are saying. What would accound for that "denim" texture though? The flap must have been flattened against the gather with a tool or something before it was re-inserted into the mold? I think in Jim H.'s theory about a special tool to repair a thin spot or hole I think he assumed another gob of glass was added creating the flap, that could have created the added thickness there, but I think it would have distorted the embossing and shape of the bottle, which is not the case.

 

[RED Matthews]

Well hello to all of you, and a special thanks to Cazdigger for showing us your bottles. The thing that gives the half leaf area the cloth like texture is the use and temperature of the pliable glass blown against that welded surface has had the surface graphite washed out of the welded mold iron surface.

I tried to explain in my blog how the sticks (really made from drinking straws in the molding process at the foundry) were heated and drawn out into a flat puddled patch of molten iron that was welded into the endmilled cavity in the bottle mold where damage had occured. The mold iron had small clusters of carbon (graphite) in its as cast microstructure. In early mold irons this was called Type A Graphite. In a micrographic picture of this iron, the graphite spots look like clusters in an * structure in the picture. After this puddling the particles were reduced in size and when the pliable hot glass got agaist the weld they were washed out leaving the cloth looking appearance.

In a recent post I mentioned a new bottle that I have found in a museum in New York State that is a SARATOGA Mineral Water Bottle and it has two of these Half-Leaf Repair marks, where one is super imposed on top of the othere in a unique X form.
I have made arrangments with them to go there this next summer and get some photos of the bottle. I still have not found two bottles out of the same repaired mold, even though I know they have to be out there. At this point I have tracked down about 50 to 60 of these weld marks and I will keep searching until I find two that are out of the same mold. I do have a SARATOG M/W pictured in my homepage blog, that has two of these welded repairs on the same bottle. Both of those marks show the grooves on the surface of the mold makers riffle file shaping of the surface in the repaired mold weld zone. One of the repairs is in the neck area up near the applied finish; the other is lower in the cavity of the same bottle. Please review my blog again. RED Matthews

 

[RED Matthews]

Hello CazDigger. I just went back to your pictures again and realized that they reminded me of another common happening for these marks. It is evident that they were open mold halves laying on the floor near where they were removed from service for cleaning and repair ( or whatever ); but there must have been a piece of mold equipmen or a tool, dropped into the open cavity. These welds are intending to fix a dent, where something that dropped, damaged the cavity. Using the edge of a horizontal milling machine cutter the v-shapped groove was lowered into the damage area creating the v-shapped groove and removing the damaged mark. After this was done, they had to fill in that groove which had a Half-Leaf edge pattern in the mold cavity. With that filled in and worked over (benched by a mold maker) to recreate the cavity curvature and polished, it was a mold ready to go back into service.

In later years when a vertical milling machine, with an endmill in the spindle, and a machine where the milling head could have been tilted over, the endmill would create the similar shape if the mill table was raised up as the cutter was moved through the machining path.

I am just trying to explaine what I see in the process of creating these marks. With over 15 +30 years of working in mold making, repairing, machining and the production application engineering of the metals and mechanisms that went with them, I feel quite confident in my analysis and work at this type of explanation activity, to help anyone interested, with the benifits of my exposure.
Best regards,
RED Matthews.

 

[sandchip]

I guess I need someone to clarify something here. Are we talking about mold repair or bottle repair? I just think there's a whole lot of overanalysing going on when the simple and obvious are overlooked in favor of an more complicated solution. These workers had to hustle, not only to meet production demands, but to get the bottle blown before the parison cooled and stiffened. I know dang well that I make mistakes when I rush my work. Throw in the element of a rushed and possibly nervous 13 year old closing the mold before the also hurried gaffer had the blowpipe/parison in the right spot, and the scenario is all the more plausible. Why couldn't the "denim" or whatever texture result from the flat areas between the mold halves? If we are talking about repairing a blowout, how on earth did glass, in its plastic state, one of the most elastic substances known, blow out within the confines of a closed iron mold (one more time noting the wall thickness in that area of the bottles shown)? It just don't add up. And Mr. Matthews, I fully respect and appreciate your time and experience in the glass industry, but I would still have to surmise that there's a world of difference between the late 20th century glass industry and that of the 1850's. I'm sure I'm not the only one who'd love to talk to someone who actually worked in a glasshouse back then.

 

[sandchip]

I looked at the pictures of bottles on your site, Mr. Matthews, and first of all, I find it unlikely that enough (expensive to make) molds were left lying around, open, and on the floor, out of production, long enough for something heavy enough to fall and hit the inside of the heavy iron mold, damaging it deeply enough to warrant the removal of that much metal. Just seem like long odds to be happening that often from all the examples shown. I noticed on the black Saratoga A Spring that both the "S" and "P" are still faintly visible within the "flap" area. If an end mill were used at an angle necessary to result in a crescent cut, the shallow part of the cut would be on the straight or "P" side, and the vertical stroke of that letter cut into the mold wall might still be visible. However, the "S" would have been totally removed on the deep side of the cut. Was the lettering recut into the mold, with the same stroke width, but not as deep, or is it just that the cooled glass on the pinched part of the parison being too stiff to fill the letter completely? Now, looking at the two sodas at the top of this page: if the mold repair was dressed down flush with the mold walls, then why would the glass be thicker in these spots? But the real clincher lies in the curved side of the flap. Note that you can run your nail along the curved side, but not the straight side. If the repair was dressed down flush with the mold wall, there would have to have been a small ridge left along that curve to produce this indented or debossed line along that arc. But it wasn't because that is the outer part of the pinched parison around which the blown bottle must conform to reach the mold wall. Am I reaching anybody out there?!