Armstrong store in Atlanta

I visited the Armstrong Outlet Store in Atlanta today. Never been
there before. It was a great experience. They sell to anybody,
including the hobbyist. It's separated into the front show room, with
about 100 types of glass illuminated from behind, and the back
warehouse, with hundreds of boxes well marked and easily accessed.
Each type has three slots from smaller to bigger. The area with the
full-sized sheets is normally off limits to customers. They gave me
rubber gloves to protect my hands when handling the glass, and a nice
catalog when I left. They had bunches of boxes of scrap on the floor
but I'm not much into that.

If you buy a full sheet, there is a good discount. Armstrong glass
that I found for $77 elsewhere was $37 there.

Michael

"Michael" wrote in message
oups.com...
I visited the Armstrong Outlet Store in Atlanta today. Never been
there before. It was a great experience. They sell to anybody,
including the hobbyist. It's separated into the front show room, with
about 100 types of glass illuminated from behind, and the back
warehouse, with hundreds of boxes well marked and easily accessed.
Each type has three slots from smaller to bigger. The area with the
full-sized sheets is normally off limits to customers. They gave me
rubber gloves to protect my hands when handling the glass, and a nice
catalog when I left. They had bunches of boxes of scrap on the floor
but I'm not much into that.

If you buy a full sheet, there is a good discount. Armstrong glass
that I found for $77 elsewhere was $37 there.

Michael



Not exactly supporting the 3 tier system is it? The only knock is that
the Chinese glass is mostly really ugly. It is getting better, but you
can't put 100's of hours into a Dragonfly and look to save $25 bucks using
cheap glass can you?


--
JK Sinrod
www.SinrodStudios.com
www.MyConeyIslandMemories.com

glassman wrote:

The only knock is that the Chinese glass is mostly really ugly. It is
getting better, but you can't put 100's of hours into a Dragonfly and
look to save $25 bucks using cheap glass can you?

***************
I thought most of the pieces I looked at were beautiful, but my
experience is very limited. The one thing I did notice is that most
of the opal glass was too transparent to suit my tastes for a lamp. I
want to look at the lamp, not the bulbs. My test was to be able to
see the shadow of my fingers on the other side of the glass with a
moderately lit backdrop, but not be able to make out the creases
between my finger joints. Does that sound about right? I made a list
of the glass I thought would work and I liked. It came to about 25
types.

Here in a few weeks I hope to travel up to Kokomo and check out their
selection.

And speaking of lamps, I'm going to start on the Worden Tulip as soon
as I get back home from Atlanta. It's going to be the guinea pig
before the Odyssey lamps. I've still got some vacation coming. I'm
thinking about taking three or four days and going for a big jumpstart
on it. This is a terrible thing to say, but I'm not going to be a
real stickler for quality on the first one. More than anything I just
want to run through the process and get a warm fuzzy for it. After
watching the Porcelli video, I know that I want to take the pattern
somewhere and get however many copies of the design it takes for the
entire thing before I cut it out and don't have anything to lay them
out on.

Michael

"Michael" wrote in message
ups.com...
glassman wrote:

The only knock is that the Chinese glass is mostly really ugly. It is
getting better, but you can't put 100's of hours into a Dragonfly and
look to save $25 bucks using cheap glass can you?

***************
I thought most of the pieces I looked at were beautiful, but my
experience is very limited. The one thing I did notice is that most
of the opal glass was too transparent to suit my tastes for a lamp. I
want to look at the lamp, not the bulbs. My test was to be able to
see the shadow of my fingers on the other side of the glass with a
moderately lit backdrop, but not be able to make out the creases
between my finger joints. Does that sound about right? I made a list
of the glass I thought would work and I liked. It came to about 25
types.

Here in a few weeks I hope to travel up to Kokomo and check out their
selection.

And speaking of lamps, I'm going to start on the Worden Tulip as soon
as I get back home from Atlanta. It's going to be the guinea pig
before the Odyssey lamps. I've still got some vacation coming. I'm
thinking about taking three or four days and going for a big jumpstart
on it. This is a terrible thing to say, but I'm not going to be a
real stickler for quality on the first one. More than anything I just
want to run through the process and get a warm fuzzy for it. After
watching the Porcelli video, I know that I want to take the pattern
somewhere and get however many copies of the design it takes for the
entire thing before I cut it out and don't have anything to lay them
out on.

Michael


Michael,
be real careful, you could over organize yourself out of having fun.

Don't take everything on the Porcelli DVD , or anyone else's word, as being
the "end all be all" official word for how to build a lamp. Enjoy it, the
entire process. Use one or two patterns and stack the glass up, who cares?
no big deal, stack the repeats one on top of the next, so what??

and if you see a glass you like and it is not overly dense, use it anyway.

I have restored an awful lot of original Tiffany lamps and what the glass
did was block the glare from the bulbs, not the view of the bulbs them
selves. Don't hold much to that school of thought. I have made a great
many lamps where the bulb was obvious as hell, but there was no glare from
it because of the glass. and the best glass, by whatever manufacturer is
the one whose glass has a particular "fire" or glow when used in a lamp. I
have never worried about the shape of or seeing the light bulb, but I don't
want a glare from it attracting my eye.

"Michael" wrote in message
ups.com...
glassman wrote:

The only knock is that the Chinese glass is mostly really ugly. It is
getting better, but you can't put 100's of hours into a Dragonfly and
look to save $25 bucks using cheap glass can you?

***************
I thought most of the pieces I looked at were beautiful, but my
experience is very limited.


A good thing to do is visit a couple of antique shops, then lighting
stores in your neighborhood, and see what's being used and how it looks lit
up. Oh by the way, you may not want to look at the prices...


--
JK Sinrod
www.SinrodStudios.com
www.MyConeyIslandMemories.com

Javahut wrote:

Don't take everything on the Porcelli DVD , or anyone else's word, as
being
the "end all be all" official word for how to build a lamp. Enjoy it,
the
entire process. Use one or two patterns and stack the glass up, who
cares?
no big deal, stack the repeats one on top of the next, so what??

*****************
That is good advice. I see the Porcelli method as only one solid
method of doing the lamps. But it is the first complete beginning-to-
end process that I've seen.

So far I have seen three different methods for cutting the glass for a
lamp, cutting directly around the cut-out pattern piece (Porcelli),
drawing around the cut-out and then cutting, and cutting from a light
table. Right now I'm favoring Porcelli's method. Cutting from a
light table and drawing around the piece both seem to add extra chance
for error into the mix.

Michael

"Michael" wrote in message
ups.com...
Javahut wrote:

Don't take everything on the Porcelli DVD , or anyone else's word, as
being
the "end all be all" official word for how to build a lamp. Enjoy it,
the
entire process. Use one or two patterns and stack the glass up, who
cares?
no big deal, stack the repeats one on top of the next, so what??

*****************
That is good advice. I see the Porcelli method as only one solid
method of doing the lamps. But it is the first complete beginning-to-
end process that I've seen.

So far I have seen three different methods for cutting the glass for a
lamp, cutting directly around the cut-out pattern piece (Porcelli),
drawing around the cut-out and then cutting, and cutting from a light
table. Right now I'm favoring Porcelli's method. Cutting from a
light table and drawing around the piece both seem to add extra chance
for error into the mix.

Michael


Here's a trick that works well, and similar to what the German fellow is
doing.

When doing multiple repeat lamps, use a piece of clear DS glass as a base,
spray the front of your Mylar(Odyssey) pattern with spray mount and stick it
to the glass, smoothly.

Put the glass on the table, pattern up, so that puts the glass between you
and the pattern face, stick down a clear material, ( ie: clear contact
paper, or clear sandblast resist,various thicknesses) use a sandblast
pattern cutter, electric type, or exacto knife to cut out the resist, use
that for a stickable pattern for cutting around and grinding to( if you
grind, be careful to not change the pattern dimensions). You have cut the
pattern one time, no holding it with your thumb, and it is reusable for
multiple lamps, never cut the pattern again. and it works over a light
table to see the color and density of each piece, no guesswork as to how it
will look.

I'm going to take a long lunch tomorrow and head back to the store and
buy some scraps to do the small amount of brown and pink in the Worden
tulip lamp. I'll buy about 5 times as much as I think I'll need just
to cover the spread.

Michael

"Michael" wrote in message
ups.com...
I'm going to take a long lunch tomorrow and head back to the store and
buy some scraps to do the small amount of brown and pink in the Worden
tulip lamp. I'll buy about 5 times as much as I think I'll need just
to cover the spread.

Michael




Waste on a window with big pieces may require 2 or 3 times the amount as
measured, but lamps with small pieces only need as little as 10-20% more
glass than is prescribed.


--
JK Sinrod
www.SinrodStudios.com
www.MyConeyIslandMemories.com

Glassman wrote:

Waste on a window with big pieces may require 2 or 3 times the amount
as measured, but lamps with small pieces only need as little as 10-20%
more glass than is prescribed.

************
Thanks for the comments, Glassman. At least I'm not totally out in
the weeds. I was a little stunned by the waste in my first two
windows. It amounted to more than the square footage I had in the
window.

I got a couple nice colors today, pink and brown. I've got to head
down to the store and buy some tape so I can repackage them before the
flight home tomorrow.

It will be nice to be home for a while. I've been on travel five out
of the last six weeks. I'm tired of living in hotel rooms. I'm also
looking forward to being able to come home and cut glass for a couple
hours after work.

Michael