All this talk of fire stick soldering irons makes me wonder:
How many of us learned to not catch a falling soldering iron by catching a falling soldering iron. Once...
(Raises Hand)
I learned not to catch marbles that broke off of punties that way...
-Pat
what???
When making glass marbles, you do what's called a 'cold fuse' to a glass rod that's called a 'punty'. The idea is to make a purposely weak joint so that the rod used to hold the marble may easily be broken free without making too much of a mess of the surface where it was located. It usually must be transferred at least twice to get the whole surface formed. Sometimes, the joint is a bit TOO weak, and the marble breaks off while you're working it. Being spherical, they tend to land on the bench and then try to roll off. Natural instinct is to try to catch the marble you've been diligently working on as it falls. This is NOT a prudent thing to do, as a piece of glass that moments before was bathed in an oxy-propane flame is, oh, what's the term I'm looking for... ...FUCKING HOT!! Unless you are especially slow witted, you will usually only do this once. Subsequently, instinct will still make you try to grab, but a split second later reason will assert itself and you will instead jump out of the way.
In the following video, if you skip to 8:50, 10:50 and 12:35 you can see him transferring the marble and just how easy the joint is to break:
(And this reminds me that I need to get my burner set up some one of these years and get back to doing this stuff! It's been far too long.)
-Pat