This is like wax guns metalsmiths use for making jewelry for casting. I can imagine this will be a big hit with them as hard plastic burns out nicely and the wax has to be on another surface as it's too weak to stand alone.

>> ^Lann:

I find glass to be much more expensive. Then again, it depends on what you mean by "smithing" if you are talking about a blacksmithing studio then yeah a small lampworking set up will be cheaper but still more expensive than the basic start up tools for metalsmithing. Glassblowing however is extremely expensive requiring an annealer, glory hole (no not THAT kind for you dirty minds), and a furnace that runs all the time so it takes a great amount of glass. Coldworking tools are also very expensive. It is understandable why studio cost for glass students are always WAY higher than for metals students.
>> ^Porksandwich:
Glass and smithing are two things I'd like to at least say I'd made something from, even if they looked like crap. Glass is probably the bigger one because it's something you could more likely do at home and on a lower budget. But they are both one of those things where I think you need a apprenticeship in to keep from doing stupid things that could potentially kill or maim you bad enough to screw you up for life.



Honestly don't know enough about either to say one way or another. Glass seemed like it would be cleaner and something you could do without a full production setup, where as blacksmithing would be something you have to go full bore on to do anything worthwhile.

I know they have some metal like substances people use for jewelry and such now that only require a small oven. They are like some kind of clay-ish substance that you mold by hand how you want then bake it to get the metal like look. And I may even be half informed on that as well.

Although I can think of one type of glass creation that I've always wanted to make and keep, where you find a beach and stick a metal rod into the sand to capture the lightning formation as it heats up the sand to glass at the end of the lightning rod. Nothing really man created about it, just kind of coaxed.

I find glass to be much more expensive. Then again, it depends on what you mean by "smithing" if you are talking about a blacksmithing studio then yeah a small lampworking set up will be cheaper but still more expensive than the basic start up tools for metalsmithing. Glassblowing however is extremely expensive requiring an annealer, glory hole (no not THAT kind for you dirty minds), and a furnace that runs all the time so it takes a great amount of energy. Coldworking tools are also very expensive. It is understandable why studio cost for glass students are always WAY higher than for metals students.


>> ^Porksandwich:

Glass and smithing are two things I'd like to at least say I'd made something from, even if they looked like crap. Glass is probably the bigger one because it's something you could more likely do at home and on a lower budget. But they are both one of those things where I think you need a apprenticeship in to keep from doing stupid things that could potentially kill or maim you bad enough to screw you up for life.

Take a look in a "Metalsmith" magazine...

....that's if they even have it in your local book store.
>> ^Stormsinger:
I'm not sure I want to -wear- one of those rings, but this -clip- is sure cool as hell.

10 years ago I was fourteen and was living on a ranch with my mother’s parents. It was the year I learned to snowboard, got my license, and quit smoking (tobacco). As a painfully shy tom boy, I didn’t have friends (besides my older brother and his crew), or a date (brother beat up the nerds I liked ) The next three years of high school were spent in the TINY town of Circle Montana. At 16 I got a best friend who I would spontaneously takes road trips across the state with. It was though her I got my first boyfriend the summer I turned 17. That summer we ran away to West Yellowstone and felt free…

At 17 with family problems on the ranch I moved to Billings (largest city in Montana). I finished my senior year there while staying in an apartment right across the parking lot from school. I worked washing, fueling, and parking UPS trucks to pay the rent. I almost got married at 19, broke up and moved in with my father’s parents. I started school at MSU as an Environmental Science major. After a year I decided I needed change.

Summer of 2005 I moved to Cookeville Tennessee to go to school at the Appalachian Center for Craft. To afford school, I took a year off and worked in the factories. I was an auto airbag inspector, assembler and typesetter…*yawn*. I finally started school again in the fall of 2006 in the glassblowing program. After a semester of glass I changed to metal. I started in Blacksmithing then shifted towards Metalsmithing. I just started working in clay a year ago and picked that up really quickly. Now I just got to finish my senior thesis this spring and get the fuck out of this place.

I have been down and lonely...but things have really changed for the better.