Air Twist Stem

A technique unique to glass, air twist requires very high quality material for success. When sparkling lead crystal became common in 18th-century England, the air twist technique spread rapidly.

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• Corning Museum of Glass
• glassmaking processes
• corning
• glass
• museum
• newyork
• ny
• glassmaking
• makeglass
• air twist
• air twist stem
• glass goblet
• 51.2.162

[capatainnemo]

sir you are a magician with glass

[GlassyARTmuse]

Dierworf, to ask questions to Corning directly you may want to send your query to thestudio@cmog.org.

[Dierwolf2000]

@willyreed

mr gudenrath may have other opinions, but these are mine.

First, that glass is designed to suck up a lot of heat, go into a machine mold, and lose it very quickly, so you have to superheat the area you want to smooth. i often tweeze but unless you really overworked the glass, it should be pretty uniform thickness. heat the desired length you want to center, use the sofi to puff it to as wide as you want, then very hard and fast flair it out.

[willyreed]

thank you so much for this wonderful instruction. I have tried it with wine bottles and i have 2 questions if you don't mind:

1. i can't get the crack to come out even all the way around the bottle - is there a way to improve this?

2. what is the best way to smooth the rim after cracking off? i am trying to turn the wine bottles into drinking glasses.

many thanks!