Excerpt: "It takes feeling for glass"
"Making glass isn't something that can be put down exactly in a textbook and executed right off according to the rules, by any bright young guy who can read the figures and work a slide rule.
"You can know everything about what goes into the batch and what should go into it, you can know about temperatures, about gas currents and the effect of ventilation in the top of the furnace house, but when that bright pond under the cap of the furnace begin to buck and stew, the situation seems to call for some veteran midwife of glass.
"The books are all right, but they just don't seem to be quite enough. It takes feeling for glass... A lot of human temperament goes into the temper of glass."
From the notes of A. O. Barnette, Libbey-Owens-Ford glass worker.
Source: Goldenseal (Spring 1996).
Related Articles
|
|
