Marvelous Mibs Marbles Collectors Zone

Doogle · Joined: 25 Aug 2009 Posts: 200 Location: Bishop, California

Dear Santa,

What about pontils? What conditions are the best for you to receive a marble and keep the pontils intact, and what is the cut off point? What I am trying to ask is, I have some handmades that are so surface pitted that the pontils are indistingushable from the damage. The pontils are there, but the pits and dings are even on the pontils (duh). Also, I have a green swirled lutz onion skin with surface damage, but there is a layer of clear glass surrounding the marble. Do you have a difficult time with onionskins? I love what you are doing and the results are very nice! I also like your disclaimers and honesty. What about prices? You can pm me, or post em if you like. Great stuff!
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Don't Tread On Me

richsantaclaus · Posted: Sat Apr 03, 2010 7:08 pm Post subject:

In a swirl, the colors come right to the top of the surface area into a point most of the time. In the process of fixing the damage, I try my best to NOT disturbe that area where the pontils occur. IF I try to fix that area of the marble, the original design gets altered a bit as I have to "pull" out the old pontil (punty point in modern glass work), it makes me have to recreate the same look as it had before I tried to fix it.

I have not tried an onion skin repair before but take a CLOSE look at the color, check to see how much clear glass there is between the color and the surface. If that area is too close, he repair may not be your path to travel down.

Prices - hummmmm. I am a retired guy after 37 years of teaching school. I usually want the money to buy glass to make my own marbles but I have gotten into repairing old marbles because of the marble show I ran where some of the vendors knew I worked with glass on a torch. I took marbles in trade for repairs, I took money (an average of $10 per repair), and I took nothing if the repair didn't work.

I have a stead-fast rule - if the owner wants me to TRY and repair after we talk all about what could go wrong with an individual marble and they STILL want me to try, I own the marble - that way if it goes badly, it is on me since it's my marble. But, if the repair goes well, I give it back the next day after reannealing it after the repair. You see, I don't want anyone to think I am stealing their marbles, I just don't want them to be mad at me IF all goes badly. Does this make sense?

Here are a few pix of other swirls I "fixed" to the owner's satisfaction:

before:

after:

see how the 3 little white swirls went astray in spite of the 15 minutes I worked on getting them to "work?"

The glass is going to do what IT wants to do!!!!!

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