His Glassworks News and Views

Spatzier lathes now online

2009-07-14T09:56:00.003-04:00

If you've been interested in obtaining one of our refurbished Spatzier lathes, we've now made it even easier for you. Instead of calling or emailing us and going back and forth, we now have a set price for the refurbished lathes and you can order them online through the website and use your credit card for payment. How easy and convenient is that!?

Depending on availability, we will have either a 6 step or 12 step lathe available at any given time. The lathes are completely refurbished with new bearings and a new paint job and run like they're brand new. We even have a very cool electronics package for the lathes that takes American 110V 60Hz single phase and transforms it to the 220V 50Hz 3 phase for use with the standard motor. The electronics package also gives you a variable speed control right on the box instead of having to change the belts on the lathe. Super easy!

If you've begun to move your processes over to diamond wheels, smoothing wheels, Polpur Wheels or Sintered radiused and engraving wheels, you'll know that all these wheels have a 1 inch arbor. No problem. We also offer both regular steel and stainless steel spindle with a 1 inch threaded arbor so you can use all your new diamond and Lapi wheels with your new shiny Spatzier lathe.

How's that for combining old school and new school. The best of both worlds at work in your shop. Who could ask for anything more?

"The Joy of Coldworking"

2009-07-08T08:56:00.001-04:00

Yes, finally there is a book devoted entirely to coldworking. It's awesome too.

Go ahead and grab a copy.

Glass to Metal Epoxy

2009-06-29T11:35:00.002-04:00

For years we've had customers ask us what the best adhesive is for gluing glass to metal. For years, that answer has been HXTAL. And while HXTAL still is the best overall epoxy for most all your bonding needs, sometimes you just need something that cures quickly, bonds fast and holds well. For small metal to glass items, HXTAL is just overkill and the lengthy cure time can be problematic if you have to bond 100 metal hangers in an afternoon.

Well, we're happy to say, we've found the solution for all your glass to metal bonding needs. 3M's DP105 is a water clear epoxy formulated specifically to bond glass to metal, quickly and efficiently. DP105 will cure in roughly 5 minutes after application, so it's super easy to bond your glass and metal together very quickly and move on to the next piece. It will remain water clear for the life of the epoxy so you don't have to worry about any unsightly yellowing of your joint and it has superior bond strength, so you don't have to worry about your metal pieces "popping" off the glass.

We have the DP105 epoxy available in 1.7oz Duo Packs immediately, along with a very handy applicator that can be used over and over again and we also carry some very efficient mixing nozzles that allow for perfectly mixed epoxy to be ejected from the applicator saving you time and trouble in your applications.

We think you'll be very impressed with this newest adhesive addition to our lineup.

We Have a Winner!

2009-06-26T11:45:00.003-04:00

Congratulations are in order for Joni Burleson of Glasscentricity out in Denver, CO.

She was the winner of our 1 pound kit of HXTAL from all the entries we received at GAS Corning.

Joni said that she's quite excited to try out some new ideas and products.

We thought it was great to see so many people at GAS this year and so much excitement in the glass community. We really enjoyed seeing everyone and speaking with many of you.

Congratulations again to Joni and thanks for everyone who participated.

2009-06-25T09:28:00.002-04:00

We're now on Twitter!

If you haven't heard of Twitter before, then now is a perfect time to find out.

Twitter gives you easy to digest, up to the minute information on what's going on with folks.

In our case, we'll be posting interesting tools that we may be testing, promotions that may be coming up, any specials that we'll run and even the occasional "lightning discounts."

"What's a lightning discount?" you ask. If you start following us on twitter, every so often we'll post a discount code that will be available for only the first 3 people who use it on our shopping cart. It's a great way to save some money and you'll also know about all the cool stuff we're trying to do.

Just head over to http://www.twitter.com/hisglassworks to start following our tweets.

We're back...

2009-06-22T15:58:00.001-04:00

But did our minds come back with us?
Probably.
Most likely they're packed away in all the boxes that currently litter our floor.
If you're having trouble reaching us please be patient as we've just returned from both GAS in Corning NY and BeCon in Portland OR.
We'll get ourselves straightened out this week though.

Thanks to everyone who dropped by to say hello to us at both shows. We love to see you and hear what you're doing. It's always great to be able to everyone in person.

-- Post From My iPhone

If you're ever in Corning

2009-06-13T22:32:00.000-04:00

Then grab some breakfast at Donna's Restaurant.

-- Post From My iPhone

GAS Corning

2009-06-12T10:00:00.001-04:00

So we're here in Corning at the annual GAS conference. Set up in booth 8 & 9 in the tech display. Drop by and see us if you're here. If you're not here, you should consider attending one sometime in the future. It's a great way to learn, experiment and hobnob with glass artists from around the world.

We'll try to post more from the tech display later today.

-- Post From My iPhone

New videos!

2009-05-28T19:11:00.002-04:00

In case you haven't been scouring our site on a daily basis for new videos (and you really should be, you know), we have two new videos that we've recently come out with.

One newest video is on using Spherical Miracles and smoothing wheels to grind and polish punties. We even show the VID Bohemia Sintered Radiused wheels and the Polpur Lapi-T wheels in action on a punty. What more could you ask for?!

Not only that, but we also recently posted a video on using plated and sintered core drills to drill holes in your glass and used them to demonstrate how to also use our sink drain hone to prep your glass sinks for your drains simply and easily. Take a look:

In case you really don't appreciate internet video or would like to see our instructional videos at a higher quality. We will also have DVDs available just in time for GAS in Corning. We'll also have them available online after GAS, so keep an eye out for them (don't worry, we'll announce the availability here and if you sign up at the bottom of this page, you'll automatically know when we post anything new via email. How cool is that).

GAS at Corning

2009-05-06T15:20:00.002-04:00

And no, we're not talking about bovine global warming initiatives.
We're talking about the one and only Glass Art Society conference.

This year the conference will be hosted in Corning NY. And we'll be there!
Once again, His Glassworks will be displaying in the tech display at the parking lot of the Corning Museum of Glass. Are you going to the conference? Do you need some tools?

Just let us know. We'll be bringing a nice assortment of tools and machines, but if there is something specific you require and want to save some shipping expense, then we'll try to bring it to you. But you'll have to let us know soon before we start packing everything up.

Give us a call or drop us an email and let us know and we'll bring it up (whatever it may be).

Card processing

2009-05-01T13:42:00.003-04:00

So I know this is a little outside the normal bounds of diamond tooling and such, but it does concern your business, so we thought we'd post about it.

We just recently moved our merchant services to a new provider through Merchant Warehouse.
They examined our current credit card processor and were able to cut our existing costs in half. You heard right, in half.

They may not be able to do the same for you, but it's completely free for you to check, there are no setup charges and you can gain access to accepting Visa, MasterCard and Discover in one fell swoop and even utilize Authorize.net for online processing. In this day and age, every penny can count towards keeping you up and running, so we thought we'd share this with you.

If you decide to join up, just let them know we showed you the way. Thanks.

A hole by any other name

2009-04-30T10:28:00.002-04:00

As many of our customer's are aware, our synthetic felt has gone through a number of changes over the years mostly centered around the ability to perforate the material.

Well, it appears the drama is not quite over yet.

The largest problem is the rate at which fabric perforators have been going out of business over the last few years. Unlike metal perforating, with fabric perforation, you have to maintain a completely clean machine. No oils, no lubrication, nothing that can mar the surface of the felt material while perforating. This makes the process extremely expensive and it's not something that every Tom, Dick, and Harry requires. This leads to a large number of business failures in this segment of the perforating industry.

It appears as though it has happened once again. Our current perforator for our Synthetic Felt material has gone out of business. We have a new perforator that we have found that is willing to perforate the felt material, but the perforation pattern will be somewhat different as we are constrained by the limitations of the dies available to us.

You'll notice in the coming months, if you regularly order synthetic felt material, that the perforation pattern will change. This WILL NOT adversely affect the performance of the material. In most cases, you may actually find that it performs better than before. Just something to keep in mind when you next order your felt.

How to "Stick it to your glass"

2009-04-29T10:53:00.004-04:00

There's a question we often get. "How do I get tape to stick to my glass when it gets wet?"

It's a quandry we've had ourselves over the years. We'd do everything from cleaning off the surface with Acetone, to putting about three layers of duct tape on objects when we were using the tape to protect pieces in the Rociprolap or making handles to hold smaller pieces or polished pieces on the grinding wheel.

We never found a good solution for this problem until now. 3M approached us a while back with their 393 water resistant cloth duct tape for this exact problem with keeping our pieces taped up while polishing for 10 hours in the Rociprolap. They said, "Give this a try and I know you'll be impressed."

We were.

We've been using this tape now for over 6 months for everything from keeping pieces together while polishing in our Rociprolap, to grinding and polishing lens and sphere parts on the lap grinder and belt sander. It's easily the greatest duct tape we've ever used.

Give it a try and we know you'll be impressed too.

Like Buttah

2009-04-21T10:06:00.002-04:00

Or Buttercut!
Have you been struggling to find a really good sandblast resist that makes it easy for you to cut your design into the resist, yet stays in place on the glass or stone and also removes easily once your blasting is done?

Have you heard of Buttercut? If you haven't, you don't know what you've been missing. 3M's Buttercut sandblast resist is most likely the best resist on the market today and now you can order it through His Glassworks!

We offer the Buttercut in rolls 12 inches wide and 24 inches wide by 30 feet long. For smaller projects, we also offer the resist by the square foot. Give it a try and we promise you'll never go back to struggling with shelf paper again.

Financing now available

2009-04-21T09:49:00.002-04:00

So you've found a lot of tools that you'd love to have to complete your shop or start your business or even take your work in a completely new direction, but you don't have the cash on hand at the moment and you don't want to continue piling the funds onto your credit card?

We'll we've heard and responded. Now in conjunction with Direct Capital, we are offering financing options for orders over $2500.00. There are many options available and you can get a quote directly from Direct Capital at no cost to you at all. We've even got a handy little box in the right hand sidebar to make it easy to get a quick quote for funding options.

Just find out how much you need to fund, and enter your information. Our helpful representative, Ryan, at Direct Capital will contact you with the funding options. It's quick, painless and frees you up to concern yourself more with your art and less about how you're going to get there.

Slice and Dice

2009-04-10T10:51:00.002-04:00

We've had a number of requests for these tools over the years, so we thought we'd go ahead and make them for everyone. We tested these out at the GAS conference last year and they were a big hit.
Now we have them available for everyone.

Our little sintered diamond slitter and face disk combination makes it extremely easy to slice, cut and grind into areas of your work using just a flex shaft or dremel tool. The slitters come in 1 inch, 1-1/2 inch and 2 inch diameter and are excellent for slicing into work, grinding off small imperfections, getting rid of sprues or whatever else you can imagine.

As with all sintered tools, the diamond on these little darlings goes all the way through the piece, so you can cut and grind with them until they are completely gone (and that's going to take a while, trust me).

New Flex-Tec video

2009-04-01T08:18:00.001-04:00

So you've seen how Flex-Tec holds up to extreme conditions from our earlier videos, but how do you mix it, handle it and apply it? Well don't worry, we've got you covered (all pun intended).

The mobile web

2009-03-09T13:32:00.002-04:00

True, technology sometimes moves faster than the 'real' world around us, but that's no excuse not to try and embrace some of it.
We were recently at a gallery opening for a local artist friend of ours and noticed how many iPhones were populating the artist community around us.

We thought, why don't we try and make our own website more iPhone friendly? And that's exactly what we've done.

Now if you're out and about and suddenly remember that you need a handpad, or diamond disk, a Polpur wheel or just a pound of cerium, you can call up our website http://www.hisglassworks.com and it will automagically know that you're on an iPhone or iPod Touch and will show you our iPhone optimized version of our site. It's easy to browse through our entire item listing, read descriptions, watch videos and order directly over your phone. I find it pretty fascinating. Next time you're on your phone cruising the 'net, give it a try. We hope you enjoy!

Prices and the New Year

2009-02-16T14:20:00.002-05:00

Sorry that it's been so long since our last post on the blog. Things have been hopping since coming back from the New Year. One of the changes with the new year is always pricing.

Fear not, though, 90% of all our price adjustments have now taken place and are reflected online. 3M materials in particular have gone up 3 times since we last updated our pricing on them, so you know we hold off our increases as long as possible for you. In fact, 3M just increased their pricing again on February 15th by another 3.9%, but you won't see that reflected in our pricing to you. We raised our prices on 3M materials back at the beginning of the year and that's where they'll stay for at least the next 6 months (possibly more).

We should have a new catalog ready for you by the first of March, so if you would like a paper copy of our catalog, just drop us an email or give us a ring and we'll get that out for you.

We also had some good news from the folks over at HXTAL. They have a new production schedule in place and we should start receiving regular shipments of HXTAL NYL-1 by mid March. No more adhesive droughts in the near future. That's great news on the HXTAL front and we'll still keep our low prices on HXTAL for you for the rest of the year too!
In other adhesive news, XTR pricing will be having an increase around the first of March to a roughly 20% increase due to the costs of materials. We'll hold the price for the next week or two, but be aware of that shift.

We'll have more to post soon, so keep a lookout here.

Christmastime is here!

2008-12-18T13:55:00.003-05:00

With the Christmas season approaching, we here at His Glassworks will be closed from December 24th through December 28th in celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ our Lord.
We will also be closed from December 31st through January 4th for the less auspicious New Year holiday.

Have a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Video killed the Radio Star (or Have Camera, Will Travel)

2008-12-17T08:52:00.002-05:00

Yes, finally we have motivated ourselves enough to start producing some short videos demonstrating many of the products that we carry (and use ourselves). We hope to continue posting videos as time allows of virtually every product type we carry. We have even created a new section in our Frequently Asked Questions section for Video Demos, so head over there to see what we have posted recently.

Also, most of the videos will also appear with the products that they demonstrate within the website, so as you go through the site be sure to keep a lookout for the videos that demonstrate product usage. You can even log into YouTube and subscribe to our video feed that will notify you every time we upload a new video.

Be sure to check out our two most recent videos:

Mixing and applying HXTAL for laminating glass:

and Grinding and Polishing with Diamond Disks:

Have a Holly Jolly Christmas

2008-12-08T10:36:00.003-05:00

It's that time of year again, the Holidays. The perfect time to find the perfect gift for the glassworker on your list.

But what to get them? There are so many tools, so many options, and you're not sure exactly what they want or need...

No fear, the His Glassworks Gift Certificate is the easy way to make sure they get exactly what they want. Available in amounts from $50.00 to $1000.00, gift certificates can be mailed through the postal service to yourself or your recipient or emailed directly to your email or your recipient's email.

Both the mailed physical gift certificate and the emailed version contain a gift code for redemption through the online store on the web so we make it as easy as possible to redeem the Gift Certificate.

Give the gift of tools this Christmas. They'll love you for it.

Paint it Black

2008-11-26T10:52:00.003-05:00

So this year, we've decided to have ourselves a little Black Friday Sale.
There's a little preview of the category of items that will be on Sale starting around 11pm Thanksgiving evening through midnight Friday night.
Once 11pm EST hits, all the items will be active and you'll see exactly what will be on sale.
We've never really tried this before, but a number of people have asked us to, so we're giving it a go.
Some of the items are going to be the best prices we've ever had on these items and it'll only be for the one day, so stock up!

I heard it through the Grapevine

2008-11-13T14:18:00.002-05:00

We're finally starting our His Glassworks, Inc. newsletter.
Currently it will only be a quarterly newsletter to let you know of new items, tips and tricks on some products and special sales only for newsletter subscribers. Our first edition will go out this week, so be sure to sign up here in order to get any subsequent editions and maybe score some good discounts.