Video Transcript

Cupboard:
We're at the Cupboard benefit for meals on wheels at Bogart's in Cincinnati, Ohio with Bob Snodgrass. We're getting ready for the Q&A with Bob.

Cupboard:
All right, guys. We're getting ready to open up our question-and-answer segment. Bob is still working.

Bob Snodgrass:
Okay, shoot.

Cupboard
Yeah. Gabby is out there with the microphone, so go ahead and raise your hand. I'll select on a few of you if you've got any particular questions.

Bob Snodgrass:
Pardon me if I forget something right in the middle. I do that a bit.

Speaker 3:
Hi. Bob, this is the question. How many times can you actually heat the glass as you're doing this? Because it seems there's no amount of times.

Bob Snodgrass:
If I don't burn out everything, I can ... There's a point where you can exhaust the glass. I've got pieces of that probably heated more than 20 times and working them up and working them down, put pattern in and then add that part to another part.
If I really get it too hot too many times, I'll start to exhaust the chemistry of the glass and make it weaker. That is what we call the minute pipe back in the 70s, and I probably sold some of them to the Cupboard in 1972. Oh, I don't have a carburetor. It didn’t then, but I'm going to put a carb on it.

This is like one of my favorite pipes to make. You can do it all right or a lot can go wrong. I was fortunate. I want the tin mill come back to me.

Speaker 4:
I have a question.

Bob Snodgrass:
Sure.

Speaker 4:
What piece of advice would you give to inspiring glassblowers who want to be successful in that specific are?

Bob Snodgrass:
First off, one of the most ... I'd say do some reading of other art and other glass. One of my favorite books to recommend to people is more than you ever wanted to know about glass vid making. It was like a book full of epiphany. It's like if you're a beginner ... Oh, it's soft glass, don't get upset about that. You can do the same thing in Borough.

When I discovered that I was doing fuming and that my fuming look different when I put pictures together or layers on top of layers ... Excuse me for a second. This is not hard enough. Anyhow, about putting things together and figuring out I found at that book was a shortcut to hundreds of ideas. I was trying to miniaturize off-hand glassblowing on a boiler scale, and it works.
Advice, be happy with what you're making. Make things that are at the level you're at. If all you can make is off-handed, don't make some sophisticated piece. It's going to fall apart on somebody and turn into craft.

Pick with what your level is. The evolution is phenomenal anyhow. It's like a musical instrument. The more you practice, the better you're going to get. Don't overshoot what you're planning to make.

I mean I didn't foresee this many people. I always thought it was going to catch on, but not the way it has. Your field that you're in competition with is huge, so to make anything second rate, just not even going to work.

Aspire being happy with what you're making and make the best you can.

Cupboard
All right guys, they have about 15 minutes left before completing their pipes. If you have any other questions, Gabby is over there with the microphone.

Bob Snodgrass:
Did you notice the carburetor has taken as long as the pipe did? Every little step can involve more time. I'm jeopardizing the help of this whole piece, every second it's out at the fire.

Again, I want to do like a wrap and pop. I've blown on this where I applied the dot and actually hold backwards when I was blowing and made that thinner. Now, I'm going to pull away in a straight line where I took off the chunk, the five, four, three, two, one thing. Soften my flame because that's broken glass.

If I go back in, it's too sharp. The flame is not going to like it. Pardon me. Soften the flame and everything went well. [inaudible 00:06:39] flame. Do you want to see it again? Here it is. These are trap gases. You don't want your mouth on there when you're blowing it. You want to blow with the air space in between to keep that shockwave. You have enough air to make an explosive mix because sometimes it goes bang.

Speaker 5:
I have a question. How much silver does it actually take for fuming if you're fuming a piece? Just for a one solid piece to fume it, how much silver?

Bob Snodgrass:
Oh, this got a few milligrams. We're taking medical measurements. Really small.

Now, sometimes ... Well, I'm not going to do it to this or I'll break it. Sometimes I'll soften a piece of glass and push it down in the filings if I was going to ... Did that blank work at all?

Speaker 6:
Yes.

Bob Snodgrass:
Wait.

Speaker 7:
I got a question for you, guys. What do I have to do to get one of those pieces?

Bob Snodgrass:
To what?

Speaker 7:
To get one of those pieces that you guys just made.

Bob Snodgrass:
I think you've got to bid for it on the auction.

Speaker 7:
Got you. Okay.

Speaker 6:
You should probably take a look at them.

Bob Snodgrass:
More flame, more heat. Not quite that much, but that's what I've got. Oh, in times it shakes. It's important. When you're out of time. I was lucky I didn't mention that. Here we go.

I got a tool here made out of stainless steel. I want to warm it up. I don't want to warm it up so much though that I surprise the glass with a too hot tool. I go to this carbonizing flame for just a second. That's not so hot that when I grab this, I'm not going to shock it and cause it to break.

Back to that cap thing. That’s one of those didn't quite work. I still have a way to work. No. You don't do things over three times. You change your whole approach to what you're going to do with it.

Cupboard
We're going to go ahead and let Bob continue working until about five, ten. We've got about 15 minutes or so from now from where we start the film.

Bob Snodgrass:
It's wrapping up. I'm going to pick a whole on the end of this instead of warp and tap. It was already being the kill if that would work the way it was supposed to. Here we are. Make some noise. I've got a whistle in the fire. There you go.

Did you hear that? We just lost this much of that fire trying to do ... Well, it's sure an artist is static as it was. This small is the new big, all right. That's a shame. You might be able to find it in the trash can. I don't know yet. I'm shooting for one more wrap and tap and see if I can take this off.

Anyhow, when you're working at home and you're in your shop and it's quite and you're maybe not distracted, your timing stays a little better. Oh, and you're a secret drummer when you become a glassblower. Everything has a count, like 47 and you tap. In your head, that was all going on in that count.

That's what it was supposed to do. Now, we change the flame again because that's broken glass and I got to sneak up on it to hit it or it'll want to do something like crack.

I don't know. That's my number one list to make anymore, maybe. What's up with that? Close. There's one more tool out here. Here it is. Oh no. That one went down the tubes too. There it is, another crack in it.

Thank you anyhow. Sometimes glassblowing isn't successful. Sometimes those are the best lessons too.

Good day. What else can you say?

Speaker 6:
It needs constant practice and

Bob Snodgrass:
It depends on how intense the piece should go in an adventure after. Usually, a simple piece like that shouldn't have gone down. The more complicated it gets, all of a sudden, like a dragon in the tube, this is the success rate. There's dozens of dragons around my shop that the whole dragon school anymore, but the rest of it just went apart at the last minute, the last second. A little mismatch in balance of, "Oh, I accidentally wave that through the heat." I wonder." No. How?

The more complicated the piece, the more likely you are setup. If you can assemble things in a whole bunch of simple parts and join them, sometimes that's no real stress. Some pieces like say I sold you a thousand up piece and you chipped it, brought it over and said, "Bob, fix this. Right here on the carburetor. It's only a little." I'm jeopardizing that whole piece when I go back in there, and it scares crap of it.

It's more about how complicated the pieces are once you've got a food feel for it. Part of having a good feel for it is make sure to get turned into a pendant if I was at my own torch. I would've swirled that part of it, put a loop on it. There, I'm happy with it. You learn to flow with the piece a lot.

Cupboard
Guys, we're going to go ahead and take questions afterwards. We'll open up another Q&A after the documentary. The pieces that they've created we're going to go ahead and action off after the documentary.

Cupboard
We want to thank Bob Snodgrass for making the special trip to the Cupboard in October 2013 along with Steve Sizelove and [Mike Goodman 00:15:56] for a great glassblowing demo at Bogarts in Cincinnati, Ohio on behalf of the Cupboard's benefit for Bills on Wheels. Stay tuned for more great content on the Cupboard's Artist Insights.