King Tut Project

Greetings from our Hot Shop in Idaho. It's been 2 months since our last post, but for good reason. We've been busy completing a project for the Museum of Idaho and their new exhibit, "King Tut: Treasures of the Tomb", which opens to the Public June 15th, 2012 in Idaho Falls, Idaho.

Egyptian themed glass gift ideas

A hand-engraved prototype of King Tut

We were honored and excited when the Museum wanted to work with our glass shop on this project. They asked us to come up with an Egyptian-themed glass gift to give to their V.I.P. guests for their private pre-grand opening event. We thought a few inquiring minds might want to know the process we went through to come up with a prototype that would work as a gift for the guests. The following dialog and pictures will show the detail that went into getting a glass paperweight gift prepared from start to finish. As with anything unknown, we hit some snags along the way, but we're pleased with the outcome overall. If you have any comments after reading about this latest venture, please feel free to do so. We always like to hear constructive feedback.

The Museum's Director of Marketing asked us to come up with some prototypes for her to select from, and we got to work designing a variety of items to choose, shown above. We created several different pieces, including  a blown glass Sphinx, a blown glass head bust of King Tut, a glass pyramid with the Eye of Rah, and various engraved and sandblasted paperweights. After discussing pros and cons, she decided on an "Eye of Rah" paperweight, with the eye clear, and the rest of the round disc sandblasted.

Next, we had to come up with the most efficient way we could to create 300 of these paperweights in the most timely manner possible. We started with large amounts of float glass that we had to clean and cut in 2" and 1 1/2" squares. Russel always wears protective gloves to prevent cuts from small shards that break off as he's cutting.

Spraying Molds to prevent glass from sticking. 

Glass squares ready to be slumped

Next step was to stack the squares into prepared molds and place them in our kiln. We ended up buying a different kiln, as our old one didn't reach the right temperature, and the discs had a dull finish to them due to vitrification.

Venting the Kiln

 We were firing 2 kilns twice a day, and slumped the float glass into a round mold. The top square had to be placed correctly to make sure the tin was right side up to provide the best possible clarity and reduce any chance of vitrifying. 

Kiln at 900 C

We managed to slump 10 a day. It took 2 hours to heat up to temperature, and around 6-7 hours to properly cool down.

Cutting patterns

Once cooled, we place the Eye of Rah pattern on the round disc and used an exacto knife to cut out the resist paper. 

Sandblasting the glass

The last step in this process required a sandblaster. Unfortunately for us, our compressor died and we had to replace it before we got done with this project. Russ also revamped the vac. system to ensure optimal safety when using the sandblaster. Once all the tweaking was done, the project went pretty smoothly from  that point.

And finally, the end result. We learned a lot from this project and hope the Museum is happy with the gifts we made. For being a small company, we felt we got the order done in a timely fashion. We hope to create more custom designs for new customers in the near future.  We're thinking of glass awards and gifts for larger Companies and Corporations. Anyone have any ideas to pass along?

Finished product of the Eye of Rah Paperweight