pdp1@EARTHLINK.NET on wed 15 dec 04
Hi Hank, all...
Don't let 'em bamboozle ya...
The correct understanding is that Glass does flow at
liesure...and that variations in the formula of the Glass
are liable to influence the rate at which it will do so. I
have seen panes of Glass as had been horizontally disposed
for a long time, have a slight sag in their middles, as well
as seen 80 or 100 year old broken conventional Window panes
I was replaceing,
have shards be thinner at the Window's tops than at the
bottoms, and no, they were not installed that way.
Now
maybe someone gunna tell you or me yet again, that someone
had of course, "put
it that way to begin with"...but...I cannot see how that
ever would have been so.
Even in the crudest earliest
methods of Sheet Glass making, where, thence broken and not
happily 'cut' out of rolled
'Tongues' there would be very noticible differences in
thickness to begin with across the larger general mass, and
this stuff was about never used
for Panes anyway...or from spun discs, where the thickness
would necessarily vary...while, in so called "Stained or
Leaded Glass Windows" where it was or is used sometimes
still, economy and work-with-what-you-got, to match colors
and whirls in the design at-hand from the maybe often one
certain area of a tongue, or of a limited supply of some
colored Glass of some other
small scale method, or a usually quite limited supply OF
either...
Ones use of
the pieces and the shapes
that can be got of them for Leaded Glass Windows would
over-ride
any other reason to orient every single oddly shaped little
piece, to be thinnest at what would, on final assembly, be
the finished Window's top.
I have seen many Stained-Leaded Glass Windows and I have
never seenthis done that way, where 'thin' was allways
'up'...
Nor were hand blown or spun discs or rolled Tongues or their
likes being cut up to Glaze Industrial or Commercial
Buildings' many paned Windows in the 1890s or early 1900s...
Glass, so far as I recall, is a highly viscuous material,
and
whether or not it is formally pronounced as being a 'solid'
or a 'liquid' it will behave as if it were a very Very
VERY slow-motion liquid...
No Commercial Window Glass has been made other than damned
even in thickness for likely a hundred and fifty years now,
even if some Art Glass may vary in it's evenness or
thickness in a goven larger piece...
and it would be, and is, absurd for any scientist or
chemist or other
never-left-the-house boy or girl to tell us that 'fifty year
old Window glass' was installed with it's
"thick-side-down"...
The earliest needing-to-be-seriously "flat", of Mirrors and
other
sheet Glass was floated on molten Tin when a perfect
flatness and slow cooling was dedicedly important, and these
old Mirrors (when old enough) also show the thickening at
their bottoms, and
no, they did not start out that way either...
Nor would a difference of maybe one or two thousands of an
inch TOPS, if that, fifty or a hundred or a hundred
twenty-five years ago, or a
couple thousandths at most, over several feet or more, when
cut into small panes, have ever
been noticed by anyone at the time of installing Wondow
Panes...nor would such factory fresh minute bagueries in
thickness have
been liable to such discernment every time TO have the
"thicker-side" on the bottom, by the Glazier or Janitor or
Homeowner or whomever and
all ever else as happened to have installed endless,
countless, millions of Windows over even the last even fifty
to a
hundred
odd years or so...
Seems to me...
Anyway...
Happy Hollidays...
And don't let 'em fool ya...
Love to all,
Phil
el ve
----- Original Message -----
From: "Hank Murrow"
> On Dec 14, 2004, at 5:41 PM, Hank Murrow wrote:
> >
> > I have visited the Peter Wentz Farmstead(1760's) in
Montgomery Co, PA.
> > I have seen handblown (presumably lead glass) window
panes which have
> > sagged considerably in the intervening 240 years, and
are demonstrably
> > thicker at the bottom. I have also seen this in France
in old
> > buildings.
>
> I have been corrected by Lee's post and also Clifton
Webb's private
> post. Apparently, the glass, uneven at manufacture, was
installed with
> the thicker side down to start with.
>
> Cheers, Hank in Eugene....... opening another firing
today........ what
> will ClaySanta bring?
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