Waterford

I loved Waterford.  It's a town, but you can also go take a factory tour.  It was pretty impressive.  I'm not really a big fan of crystal, but now I think if it's not waterford, it's crap.  ;)  Seriously though, what makes crystal is the lead content in what would otherwise be glass.  Most crystal is around 23-25%.  Theirs is 33%, which is why it costs more but also looks better.  :-) 

There's a fancy showroom where I was almost tempted to buy some super overpriced stuff (haha.)  

Here I am examining a glass they planned to melt down.  They waste nothing--everything that's "imperfect" (this had a tiny glass bubble in the base) is melted down and reused.

I thought that it was interesting how hard it is to become a master.  5 years basic apprenticeship and then 3 more years to Master.  In the old days, they had 3 chances after completing the 5 years to make a perfect apprentice bowl.  If they couldn't do it, they had 2 choices.  Start over and redo the 5 years completely, or leave.  Wow!  

Here's the apprentice bowl.  If I bought anything it would have been that, but it was like $500!!  Oh well.

 Waterford Clock.  COOL!!

They make all the custom orders here in Waterford.  So their mold maker does all the wooden molds.  I think you can use a wooden mold like 4 times before it burns out.  Literally.  At that point you have to make another one.  So for all their non custom order work, they use cast iron.  Neat.  

They had a lot of really cool molds.  

 This looks like a horse kind of to me, but it's a bear apparently.

 Justin Timberlake award mold!  haha.

 sports trophy--they do a lot of these.

 They burn this furnace non-stop.  If they turn it off, it takes like 3 weeks to get back up to the right heat.

 Then they fire it and blow and pre shape it.  It was REALLY cool to watch.

 See?  He's blowing it here.

 Then it goes into the cast iron mold and gets spun and blown a little more.

 I think you can see it at the end of his stick.

 Here it is, out of the mold (cooled by spraying water.)  Then they detatch it with more cold water.

 It's yellow up there in the photo above because it's not cool yet.  It cools to clear white.  Then they are in here--to be shaped.

 Then they draw lines on them and do all the cuts and then later acid polishing.  If it needs it (design dependent) it can get etched, too.

 Here's Whit.  He and I both got to smash an imperfect glass.

 That's Whit's hand smashing it.

 A master cutter doing his work.

 I talked to this guy for a long time.  He's really cool.  First they do a rough cut.  Then they go over the same rough cuts with another blade that's smoother and the cut is smoothed out.  Kinda neat.  It's so precise, the work they do.

 This was the custom area where they etchers work.  They also piece things together for like the football, the carriages, etc.

 This was a September 11 memorial they sent to NYC and they always keep a duplicate for themselves in case it gets messed up.  Then they have another to send out right away.  Kind of neat.