Waterford

We drove from Kilkenny to Waterford, which is the oldest city in Ireland.  It was founded by Vikings in 914.  We visited a bunch of historic places, but I suspect one of the main reasons we were there was to see the Waterford crystal factory.  Jon and I thought this might be a real snoozer but it turned out to be really interesting.  They started making crystal here in 1783.  We got a tour of the factory and saw that the process of making a production vase starts with making a wooden mold:

Wooden molds are used for low volume production or prototypes.  Actual production molds are cast iron. 

Here is the motorcycle connection.  The above mold was made for the Honda Classic trophy, whatever that was. 

Here is the wood shop where they make the wood molds.  A woodworkers dream shop.

 

Next we saw them making some vases.  A worker takes a rough form and forces it into a mold and then blows through the pipe to force the glass out into the mold. 

 



After it comes out of the mold, another worker inspects it and then disconnects it from the pipe and cools it down.

Then edges are ground and polished

After many more steps the final product looks like this:

Some of those steps consist of cutting designs into the piece.  We saw men doing this on other pieces.  First the layout lines are drawn:

Then cutting wheels are used to cut the glass:

Each piece in a production run is cut like this by hand.  You might think it could be done by a machine, and in fact it can.  They have a couple of computer aided machines that are used on very heavy pieces or for prototypes, and we saw one in action:

There is another way to make crystal, and that is by carving from a solid block.  We saw a man making this Viking ship:

He sculpts individual pieces like the oars:

And  the shields:

And then glues them onto the ship using an ultraviolet activated glue made by Loctite.

We saw a copy of a piece given to the New York Fire Department in honor of the priest and other first responders who died there on 9/11.