Trip- Day 2-Paul Wissmach Plate Glass and Marble King

Paul Wissmach

Our first stop today was to Paul Wissmach glass factory which was our first experience witnessing plate glass production. Plate glass is used for windows, stained glass windows.  Below is a video below of the very efficient and fast (1 min 26 secs to make one sheet) process of laying out the plate glass.


Plate glass assembly line at Paul Wissmach Part 1 from Rebekka Atkins on Vimeo.



There are different textures of glass used in stained glass windows to achieve this they use different rollers, when the molten glass is sent through the machine.

 

After the above video the glass is slid onto a conveyor belt which takes it through a cooling process, after all it takes awhile for the molten glass to cool from 2300 degrees F, harden and be touched to cut.  Once through the oven it is cut into regular square pieces of various sizes.


Paul Wissmach Assemebly line Part 2 after the cooling conveyor from Rebekka Atkins on Vimeo.


After the glass is packaged in wooden crates, packed with poplar shavings they are stamped with the various places from which the order was placed....It was nice to see goods made in West Virginia going Germany, Saudi Arabia, Australia as well as various places with in the US.

                           
Another great quality about glass is, its ability to be recycled and lose the quality of its properties.  Wissmach recycles in house whenever possible or sends cullet they can use to Marble King just down the road, where it is turned into what else but marbles!

 Marble King

The second stop for the day was Marble King which solely makes marbles which are World renowned, exporting to 17 countries.  Consumers buy from all over the world stating that Marble King is the standard game marbles.  The marbles they make are also used in spray paint cans, as lenses over LED lights in appliances, to roll caskets into Moslem's and in power company cooling towers to break up and trap particulate allowing only steam to be released from the stacks. Unfortunately due to equipment shorting out from a power outage we were not able to see the Marbles made.



                                                                   



marbles used for landscaping



Discussion Question

 

1. On our trip we had to request special permission to be able to take pictures and video at Paul Wissmach. Why do you think it would be such a big deal?  Read this article and use it to make a connection and for support in your thinking.