how we do it in texas

This morning I was getting my scraps of glass together ready to stick them in the mold and then into the kiln. However, before I could do that, I needed to figure out how much glass I would need. After a little searching around on the net, I figured I would need approximately 3 pounds of glass to make an 11 1/2 in disc. However, seeing as that I have no scale that would allow me to weigh out 3 pounds I had a bit of a dilemma.

I could have driven the 10 miles down to the post office and had her stick my bags of scraps on the scale and see how much I had, but I didn't feel like doing that. Instead I came up with the ingenious idea to make my own "scale".

I took a piece of wood, found the center of it, and put a hook in there. Then I screwed in two screws, one at either end. For my 3 pound weight I used 3 bags of garbanzo beans. I placed the garbanzo beans and the glass in plastic bags and hung each one on opposite sides of my super precise measuring instrument. Then I just adjusted the amount of scraps until the whole thing was more or less level. Not an exact science, but good enough for (married to) government work!

Now all I need is a duck and I can get my witch hunting business underway. And if you have no idea what I am talking about, go watch more Monty Python!!

Here are a couple more pictures from the end of the day.