Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/176

 rejected for this cause. The bottle of approved avoirdupois is placed in a closely fitting case of wrought iron mounted on a long handle. Only the neck of the bottlers allowed to project. Thus blanketed and mounted, the hot glass is easily handled.

It goes now to the gaffer, to have its neck properly shaped. He is found at no great distance, sitting before a little side furnace which affords three openings—"glory-holes"—large enough to admit the necks of the bottles, and a heated atmosphere of sufficient intensity to make the glass necks plastic and workable.



Crude petroleum is the fuel used. It is stored in a tank to one side of the furnace, and trickles down, drop by drop, into a tube which brings a strong blast of air from a distant fan. In this way the oil is vaporized, and mixed with such proportions of air that the mixture is highly combustible, and in burning produces an intense heat. Three tongues of yellow flame thrust themselves out of the glory-holes and leap toward the gaffer sitting before them. In England this member of the shop is known as the chairman, a term which refers to his bodily rather than to