Glass Compaibility
In Alvin Becrafts Shop, in the 60’s . A clipping out of a newspaper was pinned to his wall. It showed a cartoon of a man stranded on an Island.. It seemed that he was blowing himself a glass ball to float away in. That was exactly what he did. A cry from “Plinny “, in The First Century A.D. The phoneticians were on the sandy shores of Syria. They could not find any stones to lift their fire off of the sand. They lit the fire against the sand. The fire and sand began to mix . It burned all night.. Then something amazing happened. From the campfire coming in contact with the sandy shores, it caused a stream of crystal. Then it began to crystalize as it ran down into the water and hardened.. This was the beginning of glass.
In the early and mid 20th Century
It was not that easy. In fact, the glass actually needs a special mixture to insure the glass is a perfect consistency in order to sandwich color with clear.. They all used different methods in the process in order for the colored glass and the clear or automobile window glass to be compatible. This step was to insure no future breakage if heat is to hit it such as a dishwasher. When testing the mixture they would take a glob of glass and stretch it out on the floor , If it bows it was not capatible if it laid straight it was. This was a process. When the men used recycled glass such as beer bottle or automobile glass. This was an important step to add copper oxide to clear up the glass. I am sure that my grandfather used this method. He had beautiful hues of green and blues. As you see in many of my grandfathers pieces. Below are a few example photos of his small paperweights that he crafted. Also in his cornucopia.
Notice the light greens and blue. 
The paperweights were a WHOLE new story, because this was a large round ball of glass that in order to make especially with a second color or flower in the middle , and back then it was VERY HARD to access color that was compatible with your clear, so things got tricky, and many of the weights broke, and once again .. they held their secrets close to their chest , They could break in the dishwasher says a lot! The color was just a little off this is all it takes for breakage. Making it not compatible with the clear. But it was close enough to make it thru the Lehr and to the shelf and into the hands of a buyer. However it still had a fragile component that cannot be seen with the naked eye, you would have to have a polar lense viewer to see. And at any time in the future those can crack from the color out. The heat was intense enough on the clear that it changed enough to cool down at a different speed, and therefore cracked at the stress points,The color inside was the high point. The stress was there the whole time just waiting for the right conditions to go ahead and crack. Paperweights required many many days of annealing, This would mean a lot if gas and with the prices of natural gas. They most likely took shortcuts. I would imagine Alvin tried to use as little gas as possible so that might be why you don’t see A lot of weights vs his other wares. It might happen even if he did anneal them slowly for days. Because the glass was just simply not compatible. Now and later in the 70s and 80s many companies like Kokomo and Bulls eye and others started testing their glass, and labeling it with the exact COE, the COE is the coefficient expansion rate… so what the Hamon’s used mostly for their collectible items, like paperweights ect,, and really anything he made .. was COE 96. However the old factories there in Oklahoma and Arkansas and back in the early years they had to cook their batches longer, annealing longer .. and that is why most of them could not sustain a ‘business’ model doing this for very long, it was not sustainable, However after 1984 things evolved and glass became more compatible. So maybe keep old glass out of dishwashers all together.
