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Under the Canopy
On Outdoor Journal Radio's Under the Canopy podcast, former Minister of Natural Resources, Jerry Ouellette takes you along on the journey to see the places and meet the people that will help you find your outdoor passion and help you live a life close to nature and Under The Canopy.
Under the Canopy
Episode 123: Glass, Fire, And The Making Of Memory
Ever wondered how a galaxy ends up inside a marble? We kick off with winter wisdom—how to shovel so the plow doesn’t bury your driveway, why raccoons can’t raid tipped‑over bins, and a simple wood‑heat trick that moves warmth to every room—then shift into the firelit world of borosilicate glass with artist Trevor Logan.
Trevor breaks down glass at the atomic level in language anyone can follow: the differences between soda‑lime and borosilicate, why lab glass resists thermal shock, and how sourcing pure silica sand shapes clarity. He walks us through his signature “space marbles,” shaving a pure silver coin, fuming vapor onto clear glass, and sculpting spiral galaxies with tungsten tools before backing them in deep black and annealing overnight at 1050 degrees. We compare soft‑glass crucible work to torch‑based lampworking, visit the culture of marble shows, and map the life cycle of glass from color‑sorted bottles to California’s famed Glass Beach.
The conversation turns heartfelt with memorial ash pieces—small pendants and marbles that suspend a loved one’s ashes in glass with remarkable clarity, often using only an eighth of a teaspoon. Trevor shares options, pricing, and stories of families combining ashes or choosing suncatchers and shelf‑ready keepsakes instead of urns. We round it out with his second maker lane: 3D printing photo reliefs in PLA derived from corn sugars, using techniques like HueForge to turn wedding portraits, fish trophies, and family moments into luminous, backlit art. Along the way we highlight practical winter gear tips, all‑wheel drive vs four‑wheel drive in slick corners, and where to explore Trevor’s work online.
If you love craft, science, and stories you can hold, this one’s for you. Follow and share the show, leave a rating or review, and tell us: what memory would you preserve in glass?
Hi everybody, I'm Angelo Viola. And I'm Pete Bowman. Now you might know us as the hosts of Canada's favorite fishing show, but now we're hosting a podcast. That's right. Every Thursday, Ang and I'll be right here in your ears, bringing you a brand new episode of Outdoor Journal Radio. Hmm. Now what are we going to talk about for two hours every week? Well, you know there's gonna be a lot of fishing.
SPEAKER_00:I knew exactly where those fish were going to be and how to catch them, and they were easy to catch.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, but it's not just a fishing show. We're going to be talking to people from all facets of the outdoors. From athletes.
SPEAKER_10:All the other guys would go golfing. Me and Garchomp Turk, and all the Russians would go fishing.
SPEAKER_09:The scientists. And now that we're reforesting and letting it's the perfect transmission environment for lion disease.
SPEAKER_00:To chefs. If any game isn't cooked properly, marinated for you will taste it.
SPEAKER_03:And whoever else will pick up the phone. Wherever you are, Outdoor Journal Radio seeks to answer the questions and tell the stories of all those who enjoy being outside.
SPEAKER_10:Find us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
SPEAKER_08:As the world gets louder and louder, the lessons of our natural world become harder and harder to hear, but they are still available to those who know where to listen. I'm Jerry Olette, and I was honored to serve as Ontario's Minister of Natural Resources. However, my journey into the woods didn't come from politics. Rather, it came from my time in the bush and a mushroom. In 2015, I was introduced to the birch-hungry fungus known as Chaga, a tree conch with centuries of medicinal applications used by indigenous peoples all over the globe. After nearly a decade of harvest, use, testimonials, and research, my skepticism has faded to obsession. And I now spend my life dedicated to improving the lives of others through natural means. But that's not what the show is about. My pursuit of the strange mushroom and my passion for the outdoors has brought me to the places and around the people that are shaped by our natural world. On Outdoor Journal Radio's Under the Canopy Podcast, I'm going to take you along with me to see the places, meet the people that will help you find your outdoor passion and help you live a life close to nature and under the canopy. So join me today for another great episode, and hopefully, we can inspire a few more people to live their lives under the canopy. Okay, well, as always, we're thanking our listeners and asking, you got any ask them questions, that is. You got any suggestions for shows? Let us know. We'll do what we can to get them on. Takes a bit of time, research to make it happen, but we certainly do. And I gotta tell you, it was um a usual morning where Gunner gets up and I'm I'm trying to get a sliver out of my finger, and and the chocolate lab uh walks up and right between me in the sink, which you know what that means, means he wants his teeth brushed. And so sure enough, get the toothbrush out. And it's a bit of a different type of toothbrush. I haven't seen too many of these around anymore, but if I do, I'll pick up another one. It's kind of a three-sided one where the uh the the support leaves on it uh kind of spread out. So it's not just a normal toothbrush that that we as humans use, but it's a bit of a different one anyway. So he got his teeth brushed, and and it's that time of year again where out shoveling the snow, and I gotta tell you a couple things. When shoveling the snow, it it's tough, especially when the the boys are helping out and doing me a big favor, they throw it right beside the driveway. And as the snow comes, and it looks like there's going to be a pile of it this year, uh, Pierre, my buddy, who's been on a couple of times on the podcast up north, in 24 hours he got about 18 inches of snow up where they are, up uh west of Timmins, deep in the bush there. But uh so a fair bit, and when you throw the snow right beside the driveway, the pile gets pretty big and you have to throw it over later on. And when you get that wet, heavy snow makes it tough. So I always throw the first batches as far as I can to get them away. Now, one of the other tricks that I showed a lot of the neighbors that a lot of all the neighbors do it now. Actually, there's two tricks. Um, before the snow, one of the things is I was out with the recycle bin. It was seven o'clock, six thirty in the morning, sort of thing, and I hear this crash down the road, and I look over down the road, and there's a raccoon. And the raccoon's going along, pushing over the recycle bins, getting into them because they pop open. But so what we do is we lay the recycle bin down, and the reason we do that is because raccoons can't push it over to get it to pop open. So it keeps the garbage and all the recycle materials, the this is the uh organic stuff, the food waste stuff, and it just works great. But the other thing is when we're shoveling the snow, I know the route that the snow plow takes, and I shovel about 25-30 feet of the roadway to clear it so it doesn't pile so when the plow goes by, it doesn't pile up on my driveway. At the end of the driveway, where you get that huge mound of snow makes it so tough. So what I do is I take one swipe and I throw that snow up on the lawn, and then the rest of it I push out towards uh on when I'm walking back, I push it out towards the middle, and it stops the end of the driveway from getting this huge bank of snow every time the snow plow goes by. And now everybody's doing it, so everybody with their snowblowers do it does a double pass down and clears that out to make it a lot easier, which is kind of nice. Some of the other stuff though is that you know, I got the boots out and it just drives me crazy. Round laces. I don't know why, but they do not stay tied unless you do a double loop. You know, you do your normal one and then I do a another tightening loop. But those round laces, I don't know who came up with the idea, whether it's for cosmetics or looks or whatever, but they don't work like the flat laces used to do very well, in my opinion, at all. Some of the other stuff was that I got the insert that we talked about, and I have not had the furnace on the entire month. It was minus it was about minus eight, minus nine last night, so it may have been a little bit colder than that, but the house was toasty warm. Actually, it's warmer now with that wood stove going, and all I do is I turn on the fan and the furnace to circulate the air through the house, and it heats the whole house because the the wood insert has these blowers on it that work great, but it only heats kind of like the the immediate area around, which is quite frankly the the uh the living room, kitchen, dining room area. But to get it into the bedrooms and the bathroom, I turn the fans on and it works great. But the big problem I have with uh the insert is there's so much ashes, well, mostly hot coals. So the hot coals in there take a long time to to get down to a to an ash. But uh so I'm trying to figure out what to do with hot coals. And if anybody has any suggestions, let me know. I turn the I open the insert wide open to give it lots of air to try and get those coals down because it seems to be the flame. And the coals do give off a lot of heat. But when I like to stoke it up at night, I put about uh four, maybe about four pieces of of uh six-inch round um kind of logs in there and that lasts pretty much the whole night. But when you get up in the morning, it's just filled with coals, which is still okay, but I like to keep the fire going because the coals kind of have a tendency to pile up. So any suggestions there. And one other thing is that I've got to tell you, I'm I'm driving a four-wheel drive vehicle now. And my last couple of vehicles, well, actually uh let me see, three back and four back. I had a uh a Yukon that had four-wheel drive. And then I got that one kind of aged out because I usually put uh quite a few kilometers, miles on it. Then I got another one, but the next one had all-wheel drive. And the four-wheel drive on greasy days, snowy days like this, when you come around the corner and you give it a little gas, it cranks sideways and things like that. That all-wheel drive, though, in that Yukon, I come around the corner and put the foot down to see, and it would not swerve, slide sideways any which way at all, go as straight as a dime. So I find it works really, really good. As long as you got good tires, course in this kind of weather, it makes a big difference. It helps out a lot. And this morning I brought in uh the new special that uh here for the gang, uh the new Chaga Mint tea, which is going over great, and I gotta tell you, I'm really enjoying it too, and it seems to be really popular at the events I'm attending. But we're not here to talk about all that stuff today, although it's nice to bring it up once in a while. But I've got a guest on today that kind of surprised you. It's something I found very interesting, and it's Trevor Logan, and Trevor does something unique that uh he shows up at the farmers markets with. Welcome to the podcast, Trevor.
SPEAKER_07:Thank you. Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_08:No problem. So tell us uh tell us about what's your specialty that draw you drew you to my podcast.
SPEAKER_07:Uh glass blowing. I I do flame working, lamp working, and um, I believe it was the space marbles that really attracted you to my booth.
SPEAKER_08:Okay, so glass blowing. So uh first of all, where about you located to our international listeners? Because uh Trevor, we've got listeners all across Canada, through the States, through Switzerland, uh Ghana, all through the Caribbean as well. Where about you located from Toronto, say?
SPEAKER_07:I'm uh east of Toronto, about an hour and 45 minutes in Butley, Ontario. Right on Rice Lake, sir. Right on yeah, right on Rice Lake.
SPEAKER_08:Yeah, nice spot. Nice spot to be. So what so glass blowing and what okay, what got you involved or interested in glass blowing?
SPEAKER_07:I think back, I've I've always been interested in glass. I used to collect bottles when I was a little kid and keep them on my shelf in my room. Um but then when I got a bit older, I started seeing more art glass. So paperweights and marbles and little glass sculptures, and I really started collecting marbles. Um and then just talking to the glass blowers got me into blowing glass, just seeing how it was doable if I built my own shop.
SPEAKER_08:So very interesting. So um do you need to go to is there courses, is there classes you take in glass blowing, or is it just pick up some glass and or move on from there or what?
SPEAKER_07:So most people, yes, they would go to you can go to school for it. I believe there's still one school in Ontario that offers it, Seneca College. Um, but most people that went the route I went just had some money to put into a hobby, bought a torch, bought a kiln, and just started melting stuff and figuring it out on their own.
SPEAKER_08:Okay, so so one of the things then, uh Trevor, are are these glass blowers the guys that are going around in my recycle bin and taking the glass out of the bin? Is that where you get your glass from, or where do you get your glass from? No.
SPEAKER_07:No, we uh we get our glass mostly from American suppliers, um, and they make borosilicate glass that I can melt down and shape or fuse into different pieces to sell.
SPEAKER_08:So the the the glass from you know the the the the jar of salsa that I put in the recycle bin last night, is that uh clear glass? It's a clear glass. Is that not something that can be used?
SPEAKER_07:Um it it can be used. Uh you can use it. It's I believe that is soda lime glass. It all depends on who's manufacturing the jar. Um the glass I use is called bore silicate, and it's more in lab wear, so it's scientific glass. Um and also your Pyrex dishware at home is borosilicate glass.
SPEAKER_08:Okay, so you you know you mentioned a couple. Soda lime, I think you said lime?
SPEAKER_07:Yes. Yes, soda lime glass.
SPEAKER_08:Okay, so what is soda lime glass and what is borosilicate? What makes the difference in types of glass used for this glass blowing?
SPEAKER_07:Uh they all have silica. I believe the soda lime has the addition of soda and lime in it. Um, it's a bit softer of a glass, it can't handle thermal expansions and contractions as well as borosilicate. Which means what? When it heats and cools, um it ends up breaking. It can't withstand the heating and cooling. It ends up fracturing.
SPEAKER_08:Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_07:Yeah. Where borosilicate has a lower thermal expansion, so it can take heating, cooling, heating, cooling at a lot faster rate and can withstand the heating and cooling.
SPEAKER_08:So the glasses or the mugs that we use, um say glasses to have a hot drink or a cold drink, would that be borosilicate? Or is it would be uh mostly the soda lime or is or is there other types of glass that is used for that?
SPEAKER_07:It generally they would be borosilicate, and there is a lot more borosilicate now. If it's an older glass, it could be soda lime.
SPEAKER_08:Okay.
SPEAKER_07:Um, but I don't think there's anything really that would distinguish. You can use both for hot drinks. Drinks aren't hot enough really to end up cracking it. Okay. Where you'd want, like if you're cooking with it, you'd want borosilicate.
SPEAKER_08:Okay. So when you get your glass in, is it you know, I my vision comes in. Okay, he's getting a pane of glass in when you get this. It's probably not like that. It's probably how does it come in when you order your your borosilicate glass to do your work with?
SPEAKER_07:When I get my borosilicate glass in, um, if it's hollow glass, it comes in round tubes and with different wall thicknesses and then different external diameters. Round tubes.
SPEAKER_08:So that would be round tubes like a straw or like what?
SPEAKER_07:Like a yes, yes, like a straw, and you can go all the way up to you know 50, 75 millimeters around. You can get really big vessels. Okay. Um, and then all the color would come in smaller rods.
SPEAKER_08:Okay.
SPEAKER_07:So it's a solid rod all the way through of color.
SPEAKER_08:Okay. So the these these glass rods come in from the states. I guess there isn't anybody in Canada that produces this kind of stuff.
SPEAKER_07:Um, I don't believe there is anybody. I I've heard through through uh some of the glass groups I'm in that there is a company in Toronto that's gonna start doing it, but I don't think there's anything set yet. Most of it comes from the states. Um, there's a lot coming from China right now, and then Germany is a huge manufacturer of glass as well.
SPEAKER_08:Very interesting. Yeah, I know uh just changed with the uh Chaga tea from um Chinese teabags to German teabags, uh the better porous and all kind of stuff like that. But so when they when they do the glass, how do they make glass in the first place? I mean, um Monster Hunter, uh the you know, the the big monster came in and and they said, Oh, uh they turned the sand to glass on that show. Um, how how do they comes from sand? Yes.
SPEAKER_07:Okay, so the silica.
SPEAKER_08:Okay. So and this is a specific type of sand?
SPEAKER_07:Uh yes, they they use uh specific types of sands. Germany apparently has some of the best sand, and that's why a lot of the best clear glass in the world comes from Germany.
SPEAKER_08:Oh, really?
SPEAKER_07:Because of the type of sand that they use and they have in that region.
SPEAKER_08:So when you you're thinking, and I'm what comes to mind when I'm a because I golf, uh love getting out. Um this there's different sand in different bunkers. You get this almost white sand from the high-end courses that import sand to be used. Um what where do they get this sand from? Is it like they pick it up at a beach or do they pick it where?
SPEAKER_07:I would so I I don't know exactly, but I'm I would assume it is a mine. It's it's sand that's mined. I don't think they're just going down to the beach with a big dump truck. I don't know. And grabbing a bunch of sand. But again, I can't say definitively where they would get it from.
SPEAKER_08:Now, is is is all sand can be made into glass, or do you know?
SPEAKER_07:Uh I believe it can. I I just don't think it will be because you're gonna have other additives in the sand, because the sand is a mixture of all the different rocks that have broken down. Um so yeah, I think they just have a purer sand over there that contains more silica and a better silica.
SPEAKER_08:Oh, yeah. Because I remember when we were kids, that was one thing we'd always do is we'd get a magnet and we'd go into the sand and pull the iron filings out of all the sand as a kid. And it was kind of neat to get that stuff. Is so I have no idea how much is that contamination? Is that part of the process? Is that something in the sand, or uh do you know?
SPEAKER_07:Yeah, I they they would have to to purify the sand for sure. You you would want to get it down to where you just have the glass silica in it and no other additives. Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.
SPEAKER_08:Okay. Interesting. I know most people don't know this, but so it's each industry has some specifics, and obviously we're going to get into a lot more of yours with the glass blowing and the sand and things like that. But a lot of people don't know that the the the papers. You know how you get that high gloss paper when you get your usually advertisements or some company comes in or a magazine that has a really high gloss? Do you have any idea what they put in the in the paper to make it glossy? No, I don't. Most people don't. It's clay.
unknown:Okay.
SPEAKER_08:So and the different qualities of clay produce different qualities of high paper. So a lot of the paper companies that produce that look for clay deposits that they can re they can locate their business near and start to produ add clay to it to produce this high-glass uh paper. And I had no idea until I was actually in Sault Ste. Marie with Great Lakes Pulp and Paper there, and they were the ones that kind of explained to me how that all came to be, which I found very fascinating. But I'm hearing the same kind of thing with different types of sand for different types of glass. Yep. Yeah. So so the states obviously the number one supplier for North America, I guess, for glass blowers. Um and and so you can order different colors when you do your when you do your specialty products?
SPEAKER_07:Yes. Yeah, there's uh there's a bunch of different companies that offer different color palettes. Um there's some of the newer ones. Uh greasy glass is a really good one that makes some very vibrant colors and they have like sparkly colors, matte finish colors. There's there's a lot to choose from right now. It's quite a bit.
SPEAKER_08:So I imagine somebody who's who's who's thinking, you know, because the first thing that comes to mind is these glass blowers that blow oh vases and things like that. Uh that you, you know, it when I'm seeing them, they you get this kind of um molten glass that they're they're doing different things with. What's the process to make say well what's your number one seller? And and what would be the process to to take the glass from Raw to make it into something that uh retail people want to buy?
SPEAKER_07:So my biggest seller is probably my marbles and my space marbles. That's the thing I sell the most regularly, and I think it's because it's so unique. Um and I would start with a a clear piece of rod. And then a silver coin. I'd shave down a silver coin.
SPEAKER_08:What do you mean? Like a like a quarter or a an old quarter or what?
SPEAKER_07:No, uh a silver coin from the mint. Okay. So it would be a pure silver coin. Right. And I would shave it down and get some filings.
SPEAKER_08:Okay.
SPEAKER_07:And then you run a magnet over it to get any of in case your your file broke off any pieces or you lost any pieces off the file. So then you just have pure silver. And then I would melt that into my my one clear rod I have. So that I have silver all affixed to the outside of the clear rod. Okay. And then I hit it in front of my torch. What do you mean you hit it? And then when I hit it.
SPEAKER_08:You hit it with a hammer or what?
SPEAKER_07:What do you mean you hit it? Sorry. So I would put it in front of the flame coming from my torch. So that it's now the flame is now hitting the silver that's on the end of the clear rod. Okay. And then I catch it, essentially, with another rod. So I have another rod further behind it I'm holding with my other hand.
SPEAKER_08:Okay.
SPEAKER_07:And that silver that's being fumed off because it's hitting the heat and it's getting up to high temperature. What kind of temperature? Is that catching 1200 degrees? Fahrenheit. And it would catch and then it's catching on the rod behind it. So that I'm now applying silver onto the back rod. Um, then I once I'm done that, I take the rod that was in the back that's caught all the silver now, and I put it in the flame, heat it up a bit, and then different tungsten tools that I use, like a little tiny fine poke, almost like a toothpick. Okay. And I can manipulate the silver that's on the outside of that clear glass to give it different effects. So I can start spiraling it to make it kind of look like a galaxy. Or I can push it in really deep and make it kind of look like a little wormhole, like you'd see in some space photography. Right. Um so then when I get the design I like on that clear rod, I then back it with black. Back it so that it looks yes, with a black color.
SPEAKER_08:Okay. And what do you use for black coloring?
SPEAKER_07:Uh black violet from it's just the color is called black violet. It's just a rod of of black black.
SPEAKER_08:Okay, black glass. Okay, got it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_07:Yeah. And then I coil pot that around it. A coil pot is just spinning the glass around the outside until you've so you go around the their circumference and then keep going around it until you get to the end. Um and then that gives it when you're when you're looking at it, that gives it the the space-like effect. So the silver kind of looks like sparkly stars, all yellow and blue and green. Right. And then it has that really nice contrasting black background. So then once I'm done with the black and it's all melted in nicely, I can pull it off of the rod. So I put it in front of the torch and I pull it off from the the back side of it. So the side that I've just colored in black, right? And then the other side, opposite the black, is the face of the marble. So then I start rounding out the face of the marble, and I do that in a in a graphite marver. There's a little piece of graphite that's uh what's a marvel. Um it's it's just a piece of graphite that's it's it's like a half circle and has rounded edges so that it gives you that nice circular look on your marbles.
SPEAKER_05:Okay.
SPEAKER_07:So then I I heat it up and I keep rounding it, I heat it up, I round it, heat it up, round it. It takes a lot of rounding to get it perfect so that it's actually spherical.
SPEAKER_08:Right.
SPEAKER_07:Um and then yeah, I pull it off, I put it in the kiln and let it sit the night, and then I have a nice piece of art the next day.
SPEAKER_08:So when it it how hot is the kiln?
SPEAKER_07:The kiln is at 1050, so 1050 degrees, and that's what I sit mine at, and then it starts to ramp down very slowly overnight.
SPEAKER_08:Okay. And yeah, and and they keep their round shape?
SPEAKER_07:Yes, yes. Okay, so if I went up any higher, like if I was in the 2000 degrees, you would start you would see it start slumping and you know, not being a marble anymore, it would kind of just start going down into a little a little pile of glass at the bottom.
SPEAKER_08:Okay, so now how big is this marble that you just described that you're that that looks like galaxies or the what the pillars of creation and that sort of stuff in there? It would be about two inches in diameter. Okay.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_08:And what kind of price range does something like that retail for?
SPEAKER_07:Uh I sell them for anywhere from$50 to$90, depending on what all I have in there and what different techniques I've done to it. Right. So some I do multiple techniques and put them all together and do like different galaxies, but I'll put like five in the same one, where some I'll just do one to keep it on the lower end so that you know everybody gets a chance to buy some.
SPEAKER_08:Right.
SPEAKER_06:Back in 2016, Frank and I had a vision to amass the single largest database of musky angling education material anywhere in the world.
SPEAKER_01:Our dream was to harness the knowledge of this amazing community and share it with passionate anglers just like you.
SPEAKER_06:Thus, the Ugly Pike Podcast was born and quickly grew to become one of the top fishing podcasts in North America.
SPEAKER_01:Step into the world of angling adventures and embrace the thrill of the catch with the Ugly Pike Podcast. Join us on our quest to understand what makes us different as anglers and to uncover what it takes to go after the infamous fish of 10,000 casts.
SPEAKER_06:The Ugly Pike Podcast isn't just about fishing, it's about creating a tight-knit community of passionate anglers who share the same love for the sport. Through laughter, through camaraderie, and an unwavering spirit of adventure, this podcast will bring people together. Subscribe now and never miss a moment of our angling adventures.
SPEAKER_01:Tight lines, everyone.
SPEAKER_06:Find Ugly Pike now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts.
SPEAKER_08:And now it's time for another testimonial for Chaga Health and Wellness. Okay, we've got Rob from Hamilton here who's had some success with the Chaga cream. Rob, can you tell us about it?
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, I've uh used it on blemishes, cuts, uh, just basically all around healing. Uh anything, anything kind of blemish, it speeds it up really quick. Great. Speeds the healing process really well. It leaves no marks and doesn't stain or it smells okay. Hey, thanks, Rob. Appreciate that. You're welcome.
SPEAKER_08:We interrupt this program to bring you a special offer from Chaga Health and Wellness. If you've listened this far and you're still wondering about this strange mushroom that I keep talking about and whether you would benefit from it or not, I may have something of interest to you. To thank you for listening to the show, I'm going to make trying Chaga that much easier. By giving you a dollar off all our Chaga products at checkout. All you have to do is head over to our website, Chaga Health and Wellness.com, place a few items in the cart, and check out with the code CANIPY. C-A-N-O-P-Y. If you're new to Chaga, I'd highly recommend the regular Chaga tea. This comes with 15 tea bags per package, and each bag gives you around five or six cups of tea. Hey, thanks for listening. Back to the episode. Now you attended, you you mentioned to me something that just fascinated me that I never heard about this. You went to some, is it a marble convention in the States?
SPEAKER_07:Yes. Yes, I've gone I've gone to different marble shows in the States, and there is one this weekend or next weekend, I believe, in Toronto. They have a marble contest as well.
SPEAKER_08:Okay. And then so some of the high-end stuff there, what what kind of price does do do they draw and for what size of a marble or glass ball or whichever you we call it?
SPEAKER_07:So they they would be varying, and you have people from different fields, not just like different glass fields. So you would have soft glass artists.
SPEAKER_08:What's a okay, what's a soft glass artist?
SPEAKER_07:Uh soft glass artists is probably what most people have seen, and that's where you're working out of a big crucible. Um, and if anybody's seen the Netflix show blown away, okay. No, that would be soft glass.
SPEAKER_08:Okay.
SPEAKER_07:Yeah. A lot of people, every time I'm at my booth, everybody comes up and that's the first thing they say. They're like, oh, like on the Netflix show, and I have to explain to them that there's difference.
SPEAKER_08:Right.
SPEAKER_07:Mine's lamp working. What I do is considered lamp working or flame working, and theirs would be like soft glass, crucible work. Okay. Um, so yeah, at the at the shows, you you have a variety. You have a lot of the lamp workers have smaller stuff anywhere from you know one inch up to six inch marbles, and six inches getting fairly big. But then you have some of the soft glass people making a lot bigger because they can get it uh a mass a lot hotter in their crucibles and the glory hole that they use.
SPEAKER_08:Okay.
SPEAKER_07:Um so yeah, it's you have a good variety, and price ranges are again all over. You would probably have from fifty into the thousands of dollars for a marble.
SPEAKER_08:For a marble.
SPEAKER_07:Yeah.
SPEAKER_08:And this isn't the the kind of marbles that kids go out and play with.
SPEAKER_07:I mean, technically it is the same kind, but these ones are very artistic, very well made, and more for collecting.
SPEAKER_08:Okay. So when I was a kid playing marbles, you know, stuck the heel in the in the dirt, and you went back and you tried to shoot your marble in. What what kind of glass and uh that was there? And it looked like it kind of had almost like feathers in in a lot of those ones. How what is that, or or how does that differ from what uh you're producing?
SPEAKER_07:That is just mass-produced stuff. And I believe a lot of that came from China and India. I know India is still a heavy producer of that style of marble, and they're all machine made, and a lot of it's recycled glass now, the stuff that is coming out of India. They're recycling bottles down and just turning them into marbles.
SPEAKER_08:Oh, really? So Yeah. Okay, so hmm. Yeah, interesting. And and because I remember there was there was alleys and boulders, what we called them as kids, the two sizes, and that was about it. And so is there different size uh things? So what do you call a boulder or what do you call an alley? Or do you have that, or do they have that?
SPEAKER_07:I don't think we're really terms. Once you start getting into like the art glass marbles, you're more about the diameter of what it is, is what people are referencing. And I I don't think there's any unique names made up for that.
SPEAKER_08:Okay. And so and and a lot of people pick these up, or there's collectors of these sort of things.
SPEAKER_07:Yeah, there is quite a bit of collectors. I myself am a collector, so I have a lot of marbles from a lot of different artists. Um, but yeah, there's it, it's it was shocking when I went to the first show because I went as a collector before I even started blowing glass and just seeing the amount of people that not only make the marbles, but are also pretty big collectors of the marbles and have, you know, a few thousand dollar collections of just marbles on a shelf.
SPEAKER_08:Really?
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_08:And so now uh a lot of the other do they I don't know, is there specialty kind of ones that uh people make up that have uh um I I don't know, like uh the the the snow globes and stuff like that. Is that something that falls within your purview of industry or is that something different?
SPEAKER_07:Or there are some people who have who have made snow globes. I don't think it's something huge um for like lamp workers to make. I think it's more that's even more niche than say um marbles are. But uh there I've definitely seen a few glass blowers make them. I just think the the cost on them would be so expensive that people would be more off just to go buy, you know, uh a snow globe from a mass-produced snow globe at Walmart or something.
SPEAKER_08:So so when you buy your glass, what is it very expensive to like what are we looking at? If somebody was listening to the podcast and said, you know, I might be interested in trying that, yeah. What did people need and what kind of outlay financially do people need and and to get started? And how long does it take before you can start to produce something that looks, you know, relatively relatively respectable?
SPEAKER_07:Um so glass, when you're buying colored glass, you can there's a bunch of different options. You have China glass, which is the very low end of it. Um you can go up to the American-made glass, which is a lot better quality, it's it's a lot more workable and more consistent in the way it's produced. And a pound of glass, I would say a Chinese pound of glass would be about twenty dollars a pound. Okay, and then you're going up to the American-made high end, you can go up to probably two eighty, I think is what I saw last for a brand new pound of glass. Oh, I generally try to stick in the lower end of that because I I I don't use a lot of colors. I mainly use black and then silver coins. So I I try to be around the eighty dollar to a hundred and twenty dollar a pound for the color I buy.
SPEAKER_08:Right. So can you buy the cheap uh Chinese stuff and blend it with the American stuff and get a mixture that's good quality? You can for sure.
SPEAKER_07:Yeah. And I believe there was a couple color companies that were doing that. They were buying the the raw glass from China and then mixing it down and just making it more consistent and then re-pulling it in America.
SPEAKER_08:Oh, really? So and but uh as you mentioned, in India they were using a lot of recycled glass.
SPEAKER_07:Yeah, that was for the marbles, and I I I watched a whole documentary on that where they were just taking the bottles, breaking them down, putting them in a big furnace, melting it, and then putting it into this machine that was just making the marbles. It was just like spiraling them around like a corkscrew. Right. And then at the end it just drops them into a little bin and they were making tons of marbles.
SPEAKER_08:So the um the that glass industry, you know, when they recycle glass, um and it was the same for you know, when growing up those stubby beer bottle kind of things, they always reuse those. Is there's some kind of special glass that they use in bottles that they recycle them and reuse them over and over again, or wine bottles? Those are the ones that come to mind. Or what happens with the glass, or do you know what happens with the glass that goes through the recycle system that's here?
SPEAKER_07:So oddly enough, I do know because I worked at the beer store uh when I was in college, and it was the beer store warehouse, not like the beer store storefront. Um, and they separate it by color there, right? So the brown bottles all went into one big area, the green bottles went into another area, then clear bottles into another area. Right. And I believe that was the differences that they had for their glass was clear, the green, and the brown. Okay, and then they would re-melt all the broken ones down. A lot of them were just washed and reused.
SPEAKER_08:Okay.
SPEAKER_07:Um, but now I think it's mostly melting them and then re-blowing them and then using them again.
SPEAKER_08:Oh, really? So now I recall uh somebody once telling me that um there was little marks on the beer bottles that said how many times it was gone through the system. I is that yeah. What so what is that?
SPEAKER_07:And that's so I that's why I don't think they do it that way anymore. Right. Because I I have a couple really old beer bottles, and you can tell they have like the little scratches and rolls on them as well around the circumference, and you can tell that they've gone through the the the repurposing process many times.
SPEAKER_08:Oh, okay. Oh, interesting. So, yeah, so it's it's just interesting to find out about recycling a lot of these components and how it's put back in. And and so a lot a lot of the glass that goes through just I don't even know what happens to it. I know. My first house, which was a family house that I bought, beside it was a uh Walter Baumeister, bless his soul, a friend, that when he went in to put in a basement and redo, they started digging there, and they found huge quantities, like four feet of glass that they were just had thrown out. It was a a place that was a glass dump, basically. Huh. Yeah, which I'd never heard of or seen, but I remember Walter telling me, he says, Yeah, we had just they had so much glass down there we didn't know what what was going on, but it obviously was an old glass site, uh dump site of some kind where they just threw the the old glass and now it's being reused and repurposed, which is good, I believe.
SPEAKER_07:Yeah. No, that isn't easy. They um there's also a place very similar to that in California. I believe it's around the Fort Bragg area, and it's called Glass Beach. And it's where they used to just dump all the old glass.
SPEAKER_08:Right.
SPEAKER_07:And now it's just like a whole beach of beach glass. Usually when you walk down the beach, you'll see a bunch of sand and rocks, and you'll be like, oh, there's a nice piece of beach glass. This whole beach is beach glass. Oh, really? It's it's wild. Yeah, it's really neat. You gotta look it up.
SPEAKER_08:Uh so you gotta watch. Oh, there's a sharp one. You know what you don't want to be walking on any of that.
SPEAKER_07:I I think it's so old that it's there isn't much sharp stuff left. It's a it's it's uh a decommissioned dump site where they used to dump it. So I believe it's now inside the boundaries of a state park, and a lot of people go there and visit it and look at it. But yeah, if you just look up Glass Beach, California, you'll you'll find it on Google for sure. And it's it looks so beautiful. It's it's wild seeing it.
SPEAKER_08:Oh, that sounds different. But tell us what other kind of products do you do you produce besides these specialty marbles?
SPEAKER_07:Uh other than marbles, I do lots of wearables, so a lot of pendants. Um, and that's just different shapes. I do leaf pendants and little mushroom pendants. I do some space pendants as well, the little space scenes a lot smaller. Um, and then I do ornaments, it's really big right now. I've been selling lots of glass Christmas ornaments this year. Okay. Um, I do straws, I do stir sticks, earrings, and more wearables. I do little tiny earrings inside a sterling silver loop to go in your ear. Okay. Um what else do I do?
SPEAKER_08:Come on, this is a chance for you to do your specialty plug. We're leading up to one special one that I was hoping you'd bring up.
SPEAKER_07:I I do paperweights as well. Lots of paperweights. Um trying to think. I'm trying to I'm trying to go over my boots.
SPEAKER_08:Okay, so what is the one where people put special things that they carry with them in the glass?
SPEAKER_07:Oh, okay. Yeah. I get what one you're leading me to. Yeah. I do uh that that's more of a custom service, but that's uh Memorial Ash glass pendants. Okay. What? And marble.
SPEAKER_08:What does that mean and what's involved in that?
SPEAKER_07:So when one of your loved ones passes away, either a a human family member or friend or uh a pet, and they get cremated, I can take those cremations and put them inside glass.
SPEAKER_08:And you can identify it's not just blended all in, so it's kind of cloudy glass. It's it looks like something special. You can see the ashes.
SPEAKER_07:The ashes look identical to. What they look like when they're in the jar.
SPEAKER_08:Okay. And so and so what size is this sort of thing, or uh what do people do with it and how do they do anything with it? It's like a pocket thing that they carry around, is it not?
SPEAKER_07:Some are. So I do some wearables because there are people who want to wear and carry their loved ones around all the time. So I do some little pendants, some little teardrop pendants with ashes in it, and then I back it with a nice dark color so you get a good contrast between uh the loved ones' ashes and and the the piece you're wearing.
SPEAKER_08:Right.
SPEAKER_07:And I also do the marbles. The marbles have been really popular this last year. A lot of people seem to want something to put on their shelf and to look at. So the marbles come with a little stand, and you know, it's just you can see your loved one's ashes, and it takes up a lot less room than an urn. And it's it's I think the act of physically seeing the ashes is very nice for people if people want to see them because it's like seeing your loved ones still in their head, I guess.
SPEAKER_08:Well, yeah, I know. Um, but we're not talking large volumes of ashes that go into these glasses. It's about we're talking about the size of uh what a uh a uh a glass juice um uh container, you know, about that size? Uh about what?
SPEAKER_07:It's it's tiny. It's the amount that you would give me is like one eighth of a teaspoon that I would end up putting in.
SPEAKER_08:Right.
SPEAKER_07:But it looks like a lot because you have that rounded front side and it really magnifies the ashes. But it's a very thin layer that goes right through the middle of the glass.
SPEAKER_08:Yeah, I was with somebody yesterday whose uh wife uh uh their their uh loved uh pet, their dog passed away several months ago and and uh still having difficulty getting over it. So I think something like that to to kind of carry around, to look at, to think about would be something that people would appreciate it. And and how's that going over? And how did you find out or start about that?
SPEAKER_07:So I I kind of have heard about it. I've I've been doing glass blowing for about 12 years, so I I kind of heard about it in the beginning of my glass blowing adventure, but then when my aunt had passed away, my dad was looking at getting some stuff made for his his brothers and sisters, and they were gonna get something made and it was made out of resin. And it looked similar to what I do, but he just didn't really like the idea of resin and asked me if I could do it in glass. And I hadn't even thought about offering that service. So I I made him a bunch of them and then started selling them at the or not selling them, offering them the service at markets, and it's it's been a hit. It's been really good, actually.
SPEAKER_08:Very interesting. I know, because uh when my father passed away, bless his soul, um got some ashes from uh from my father. And actually we we we buried those. We have what we call a spirit watch in the bush. And uh it's up uh where we picked Chaga, and there's a there's a hill up there where two trails meet, and we have uh, I don't know, maybe 10, 12 um different souls that have been uh some sort of of aspect and ashes placed up there. And uh something like this would be certainly something a little bit different that uh you know if you if you wanted to to move things around or plant put them somewhere, it would be a a nice way to be able to put them at a spirit watcher in some sort of a form like that. No, for sure. Yeah.
SPEAKER_07:And I I had a a lady this past weekend that said her mother had just passed away and her father had passed away many years before that, but she wanted to know if I could put their ashes together and then they would be sealed in something, like a nice little glass marble for eternity. Right. So and yeah, that's that's something you can do for sure. So but I just thought that the idea was nice because their parents were together for so long and they wanted them to still be together after death, which I I thought was very nice.
SPEAKER_08:And what kind of uh retail price uh does stuff like that uh start and what is arranged for something like that to get done?
SPEAKER_07:Uh it all starts at sixty dollars. So that's what I offer for my basic, and that's just the ashes in either a pendant or a marble with a single color backing. Um and then really, if anything, the sky's the limit, really. I mean, you can ask me to make whatever, and we can put it in a heart shape, we can do paperweights. I've had people that wanted sun catchers because they wanted to hang them out on their porch. Right. So so yeah, the ashes can go into anything that that I make already. Um but mostly is the wearables and the marbles. That's what I most get requests for.
SPEAKER_08:So when you say suncatcher, what's a suncatcher?
SPEAKER_07:It's a little piece of glass, probably I don't know, about 10 inches long, that's spiraling down, and the the different angles on the flat piece of glass catch the light. Okay. And it's just like a little sun catcher that people would hang out on their porch or their veranda.
SPEAKER_08:Interesting. And and so you so you make sun catchers, you do these specialty ones, you've got quite a bit of other stuff. And what other sorts of things, Trevor, do you do you kind of uh make or specialize in in the glass?
SPEAKER_07:Um I I do uh I'm trying to think how at my booth. I I was just doing my booth this weekend. Um there's also stuff for smokables, so I do make pipes as well. Okay. Um I don't sell as many of those as I do the marbles or anything else, but I I do also make pipes. Right. Glass pipes. Um interesting. Yeah, I don't think there's much else. I think I I said everything that I I make.
SPEAKER_08:So, and one other now you have something else though that uh I had some discussions with uh a different line that has a different booth that you have that uh we can just briefly go into. But you you do uh 3D printing as well?
SPEAKER_07:Yes. So we just started doing the 3D printing. Um and we figured since we're at the markets anyways, it's something I have a mild interest in that we could just get two booths at every market now and then set up a 3D print booth and a glass booth side by side. And it's it's been going good. It's been going really good. It's fun.
SPEAKER_08:So can you take a picture and make a 3D image of, say, my son holding a muskie?
SPEAKER_07:A hundred percent. It's really it's very doable. It's called HueForge. Is it that technique of doing it? Right. And um yeah, it's basically taking pictures and printing them at different layer heights, and then when you hold it up to the light, depending on what the layer height is, gives the different shading in the image.
SPEAKER_08:Okay, so yeah, because I know that once upon a time you could get a a bobblehead in your own image. Yes. Um, but now I'm seeing these these I just happened to be looking uh through uh one of the social media platforms last night, and lo and behold, they had all these images of people holding, you know, fish and things like that. And and I was quite surprised and I thought, boy, that would be an interesting thing and be something nice to have for for Christmas. And that is that something that you're getting requests for yet?
SPEAKER_07:Yes, yeah, I've done a few of those already. Uh my wife also does wedding photography, so we have a couple of the customers from her um that wanted some of their pictures put into the the 3D print so that they can have it sitting on a windowsill or hanging on a wall.
SPEAKER_08:Oh yeah, interesting. Yeah, and so and the 3D printing, it it's uh pretty popular when you take it to events.
SPEAKER_07:Oh yeah. Yeah, it's honestly it's it's slightly upsetting, but it seems to be a little bit more popular than the glasses right now. But I think it's because it's so new. Right. And and a lot of kids come to the market and the kids are so fascinated with it. I I do make a uh a decent amount of toys, so the kids love that.
SPEAKER_08:Yeah, I know that uh um I was with somebody, uh Dominic, and he's rebuilding a 1972 Owls 442, and they can't get some parts to it. So I suggested to him, I said, you know, what about these 3D printing of parts that I'm hearing about? Is that something uh you know he said, you know something that might work. But uh I understand that there are some people out there producing parts because he had a 72 Owls 442 and a 69 Firebird that they were looking for specialty parts, but 3D printing in those areas might be something of uh interest that uh they can fill that void.
SPEAKER_07:Oh, for sure. You can totally do that. And if you have an existing part too, they sell scanners, lidar scanners that are held handheld, and you can replicate existing parts. Or even say if you're a sculptor and you do a bunch of sculptures, you can scan that sculpture and reproduce it in a 3D print.
SPEAKER_08:And so what are these prints made out of?
SPEAKER_07:Mostly plastic. Um PLA is the common one, and that's polylactic acid, and it's derived from corn sugars.
SPEAKER_08:Okay. Interesting.
SPEAKER_07:Um, but then they have other types as well. They have ABS, um, you can have PLA mixed with carbon fiber, you can have PLA mixed with wood fibers to give it a more wood look.
SPEAKER_08:Oh yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Well, I very much appreciate you taking the time to be on the the podcast, uh, Trevor. Where can people get in touch with you, or where can they see your products, or where can they like where where you got shows coming up, uh, and I'll mind you, uh the this will be on forever and a day, or are how can people find out more details and see your products?
SPEAKER_07:The easiest way to find my stuff is on Instagram. I've been using Instagram since it came out, um, and that's just frequency.glass on Instagram. I'm also frequency.glass on Facebook as well.
SPEAKER_08:Okay.
SPEAKER_07:Those are the two easiest ways to look at my stuff and get a hold of me. And I do on Instagram, all of my shows get posted. So if I have an upcoming show, I usually post about it a month before, and then the week leading up to it, I'll do a couple posts and then the day of as well. I post what shows I've had.
SPEAKER_08:Well, very good. Well, I appreciate you taking the time and enlightening us. I certainly learned a lot about uh a field that I I see you at the markets and and uh we talk a bit, but uh I didn't know a heck of a lot about uh your glass blowing uh profession and all the the work that's involved and what takes place, but I think a lot of our listeners have learned quite a bit as I have, and really appreciate you being on the on the podcast, Trevor.
SPEAKER_07:Yeah, thanks for having me. It was it was fun.
SPEAKER_08:Yeah, well, this is a little bit something different uh uh outside the norm of what we normally find out there under the canopy. Thanks, Trevor. Yeah, thank you.
SPEAKER_11:But this podcast will be more than that. Every week on Diaries of a Lodge Owner, I'm going to introduce you to a ton of great people. Share their stories of our trials, tribulations, and inspirations. Learn and have plenty of laughs along the way.
SPEAKER_02:Meanwhile, we're sitting there bobbing along, trying to figure out how to catch a bass, and we both decided one day we were going to be on television doing a fishing jump.
SPEAKER_10:My hands get sore a little bit when I'm reeling in all those bass in the summertime, but that's might be more efficient than it was punching.
SPEAKER_11:You so confidently said, Hey Pat, have you ever eaten a drunk? Find diaries of a lodge owner now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.