How Glass Bottles are Made - Page 10


	The sand, the soda ash and the other ingredients which go to make bottle glass are as carefully mixed as a housewife's cake. Only, of course, the measure is by the ton instead of by the ounce. Then it is goes into the furnace, the mouth of which is shown here. It takes over 2500 degrees of heat to melt this mixture.
A COMPLETELY automatic bottle making machine works like a man. A mechanical feed which allows just the right amount of molten glass to enter the first mould might be likened to gathering glass on the end of a blow pipe in the old hand method. When pressed into rough shape in the first mould, where compressed air, corresponding to the old fashioned lung power, blows it into finished form. Again, mechanical hands lift the bottle, now fully formed, on to a conveyor, whence it travels through the annealing process in what is known as a lehr, and becomes a finished product. Simple as this operation is to describe, it depends upon
	After the batch is thoroughly melted gobs of glass are automatically released and dropped into a funnel which leads to the rotating moulds on the bottle machine. Each mould as it passes the funnel is supplied with the right quantity of molten glass.