photo credit: wwarby

Do you have a clear glass vase at home? You know the one you ere given as a gift and have no idea what to do with it. It will probably sit in the cupboard for a while and then in the yard sale or worse. Did you know there are numerous ways to give a glass vase a new lease of life. You can fill it with something, anything really, and it does not have to include flowers! If you have a particular interest of hobby then you can use that as the basis of items to put in your vase. Items like golf balls if golfing is your thing, or keys if you collect them, maybe marbles or beads. For a purely decorative vase try using colored sand in layers to make it more effective. As I said just about anything can be put in a glass vase to make it more interesting.

There are many ingredients that go into making glass at different points in the glass making process. Fining agents are an important part of glass manufacturing. These additives are included with other ingredients during the meltdown phase of the operation. If you did not add a fining agent, small pockets of undissolved gas bubbles would remain in the glass. Bubbles have a negative impact on appearance and mechanical properties of the final product. Nobody wants to see a wine glass with bubbles in it unless it is intentional. Antimony trioxide is a very common example of a fining agent. Its presence causes smaller bubbles to come together and form larger bubbles. The larger bubbles are then able to rise to the surface of the molten glass. The result is a bubble-free mixture of fluid glass.