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Tuesday, August 3, 2010

A Different Kind of Glass

Warning:  The following paragraph consists of nothing but whining.  Skip it and I'll write about glass in the next one.

I'm back at work.  It is soul-killing and destroying any patchy creativity I ever had.  I have been putting in 12 hours at a time and come home too tired and in too much pain to do more than throw together something vaguely nourishing and fall asleep on the couch until it's time to go to bed so I can toss and turn in the more traditional setting. 






I haven't been at the torch in about a week.  But I did find some neat glass in the parking lot.  I'm pretty sure this is a chunk of obsidian, or naturally occurring volcanic glass.  And no, I'm not even going to try torching it (Joe asked if I was going to.)  It has quite a few bubbles in it and I doubt it wouldn't explode.  It has chips like glass would and a strange gunmetal irridescence in the places that are not covered by the matrix or freshly chipped off.  Not sure what the matrix is.  Parts of it look like it contains metal but a geologist I am not.  This is what Wikipedia has to say about obsidian.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsidian

Sounds good to me.  I'm off tomorrow.  I ought to be able to make a bead or two, and will try to make one or two tonight.

4 comments:

  1. that's exciting. Never heard of it before. I can't wait to see what you do with it.

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  2. Thank you! I have no clue what I'm going to do with it. It's too big to use in its rough state and I don't even begin to know how to process it. Historically it would be used to make piercing weapons and it is arrowhead sized. Any ideas?

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  3. Call it a moon rock and make a necklace out of it as is? ;~) Looks like obsidian. Might be fun to mess with. Hang in there!

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  4. I'd really like to try knapping this into a small spearhead or large arrowhead, but this is a skill I do not have and don't want a pile of chips. Even experienced flint knappers lose a lot so I know better. If I had a pile of them I'd give it a shot, but as I only have the one...

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