Holiday Schedule

Here we are the day before Christmas Eve looking at our 10 inches of snowfall and waiting to celebrate the birth of our Lord. In that vein, we will be closed from tomorrow, the 24th of December through the 28th of December in observance of the Christmas holiday.

We will be open on the 29th and 30th and will ship orders placed in the interim.

We will also be closed the 31st of December and 1st of January for the New Year's holiday.

We will be back for normal operation on the 4th of January.

Here's hoping that everyone has a wonderful Christmas holiday and Happy New Year!

We'll see you again in 2010. Thanks!

Phones still down

Amazingly, AT&T still can't seem to figure out what went wrong with our phone lines.

We now will not have our main phone line or fax line back up and running until the 17th of December.

We apologize for the inconvenience this is causing.

Our 800 number is still active at 800-914-7463

and we have a secondary line up and running at 828-254-2554.

As always, you can reach us via email.

UPDATE: All of our phone lines are back up and running. You can contact us again at 828-254-2559 and fax to us at 828-254-2581.

Black Friday through Cyber Monday

This year we decided to do a little something different with our Black Friday sale. We've decided to extend it through the entire weekend through to Cyber Monday.

Now you have four whole days to save a bundle of cash on some of our most popular products. Who can beat that kind of deal!?

You can preview the products that we'll be offering now by going to our Black Friday and Cyber Monday page. The products will have their normal prices listed until Friday morning when the sale prices activate. This way you can prepare for the sale and know what to get beforehand.

Cool eh?

Have a great Thanksgiving!

It's that time of year again

Can you believe it's almost Christmastime again?

And what's the best Christmas gift a glass artist could ask for?

Tools, of course!

And what better way to supply your favorite glass artists with the tools they want, but to give them a His Glassworks Gift Certificate and let them choose their own.

And if you're the glass artist in question, why not give the subtle hint that you'd love a His Glassworks gift certificate this year instead of all the wrong tools that you have to try and return.

Our Condolences

Bess Littleton, wife of Harvey Littleton passed away on October 8, 2009 of cancer.

We wish to express our heartfelt condolences to the entire Littleton family in their loss.

Donations may be made in memory of Bess T. Littleton to The Hospice and Palliative Care Center of Mitchell County, PO Box 38, Spruce Pine, NC 28777 or to Treasure Coast Hospice, 2500 Virginia Ave., Suite 202, Fort Pierce, FL 34981.

Technology

For those of you who have tried to order online with us for the past few days, you may have noticed that our website was not behaving correctly. We had a bit of an upset in the backend programming that caused some issues with pricing on many of our products.

I'm happy to say that we have sorted those out and the site is back to running normally.

We apologize for any trouble this caused with anyone, so we're offering a nice little 10% off coupon for the first 50 users or until the end of the month, whichever comes first.

Just type in error09 into the coupon code field to receive your 10% off.

Sorry again for the inconvenience.

Thanks

Sintered Diamond Segments

We often get asked about how to get an old Rociprolap or Slurry grinder wheel flat again. The easiest way is to have them blanchard ground, but it can be costly and a lot of trouble to have the wheel removed and sent out for grinding.

It's much easier to do this in-house, but where to find a large steel disk with diamond to grind down the metal?

Well, why not make it yourself? We now offer Sintered Diamond Segments for creating your own tools and accessories. These little 1 inch long diamond segments are all diamond, all the way through, so as they wear, they will reveal new diamonds and continue to grind.

We offer three grits, 45/50, 100/120 and 180/200 all mounted on 1-1/2 inch bolts. We can also mount segments on custom sized bolts at your request.

Point of Sale at Tradeshows

We've had tons of folks ask us about the software we use at the GAS conference, the BeCon show and the Glass Craft and Bead Expo.

We have a pretty simple setup with an iPhone and an iPod touch and the program we use on both is the most excellent RingItUp software from PingySoft.

We've tried this software out in Vegas this past year and we were completely and totally impressed with it. The full scale rollout happened at the Corning GAS conference and continued on to the BeCon show in Portland.

It's a very simple program that allows you to upload all your products (or just a subset of products, like just what you are selling at your trade show). The program then allows you to put your customer in either from an existing customer list that you can also upload to the phone or iPod or enter them as a walk-up customer and simply take their name and email address.

The program integrates with several credit card processing programs so you can seamlessly put your customer's order into the iPhone or iPod, then move to the credit card program, charge their card and return to RingItUp and email the receipt of the transaction to your customer.

If you're looking for a quick easy and efficient way to handle transactions at trade shows or craft fairs, then you owe it to yourself to look into this program.

True, it only runs on an iPhone or iPod touch, but you know you've been wanting one of those anyway.

Single Speed Hand Grinders are no more

Alpha tools has officially discontinued production on the venerable AWP-158 hand grinder. After years of faithful service, this single speed hand grinder is going to the great machine graveyard in the sky.

Alpha will only produce the newer variable speed VSP-120 hand grinder now.

We've removed the AWP-158 from our web site, but Alpha does have a few still on hand if this was a tool you were interested in obtaining. Pricing will still remain at $300.00 until they run out of stock. If you're interested in one of the AWP-158 grinders, give us a call.

I think this is great idea though. The variable speed of the VSP has been a major selling point for that model and it easily outsold the AWP 3 to 1. With the variable speed you can enjoy quick efficient grinding and then slow it down for precise polishing without wasting cerium or overheating your glass. It's a great machine and I'm glad that Alpha is concentrating on it for the future.

Diamond Disk Seconds Sale

Every year we try to sort through the diamond disks that we've made through the year that haven't been quite up to par visually and offer them online for a substantial discount. It keeps our shop clean and saves you tons of money. Well, that time has arrived once again.

We've gone through our diamond disks and have a nice little assortment of disks that just didn't quite measure up to our exacting standards. "Are they defective?" you ask. No way!!

These disks are only visually defective. They generally have small blemishes or areas where the diamond just didn't disperse randomly enough on the surface. This normally shows up as small areas where there is no diamond apparent. This won't affect the grinding of the disk or its usefulness, but it just doesn't look pretty.

It's a great way to stock up your shop for not a lot of money.

Check it out!

3M Microfiber Cleaning cloths

So what's the worst part of trying to set up for craft show? Trying to keep your glass clean, dust-free and fingerprint-free before and during the show. We know. It's annoying and a hassle.

Well, these little guys make it a whole lot easier. 3M's professional grade microfiber cleaning cloths make short work of dust, dirt and fingerprints on your glass. You can use them wet or dry, with or without chemicals and they work perfectly. You can even wash and dry them (just don't use fabric softener).

A great little time saver.

3M Electrostatic Diamond Disks

We've been testing these babies out for about 4 months now and everyone who has seen them or played with them has fallen head over heels in love with them.

The 3M Electrostatic diamond disks are absolutely perfect for grinding and smoothing down smaller surface areas on your glass like jewelry and small scale work. They make short work of the surface and leave a virtually chip free edge even at the 120 grit. Quick, efficient and inexpensive, these disks will revolutionize many smaller pieces that you work on. You can also easily transition from either the 400 grit or 600 grit straight to the 3M Cerium impregnated disks for lightening fast polish. You won't know what you used to do without these.

Spatzier lathes now online

If you've been interested in obtaining one of our refurbished Spatzier lathes, we've now made it even easier for you. Instead of calling or emailing us and going back and forth, we now have a set price for the refurbished lathes and you can order them online through the website and use your credit card for payment. How easy and convenient is that!?

Depending on availability, we will have either a 6 step or 12 step lathe available at any given time. The lathes are completely refurbished with new bearings and a new paint job and run like they're brand new. We even have a very cool electronics package for the lathes that takes American 110V 60Hz single phase and transforms it to the 220V 50Hz 3 phase for use with the standard motor. The electronics package also gives you a variable speed control right on the box instead of having to change the belts on the lathe. Super easy!

If you've begun to move your processes over to diamond wheels, smoothing wheels, Polpur Wheels or Sintered radiused and engraving wheels, you'll know that all these wheels have a 1 inch arbor. No problem. We also offer both regular steel and stainless steel spindle with a 1 inch threaded arbor so you can use all your new diamond and Lapi wheels with your new shiny Spatzier lathe.

How's that for combining old school and new school. The best of both worlds at work in your shop. Who could ask for anything more?

"The Joy of Coldworking"

Yes, finally there is a book devoted entirely to coldworking. It's awesome too.

Go ahead and grab a copy.

More videos on Wheels

In case you're not keeping up via YouTube, we have another video posted of using the Spatzier lathe, this time with sintered engraving wheels.

Glass to Metal Epoxy

For years we've had customers ask us what the best adhesive is for gluing glass to metal. For years, that answer has been HXTAL. And while HXTAL still is the best overall epoxy for most all your bonding needs, sometimes you just need something that cures quickly, bonds fast and holds well. For small metal to glass items, HXTAL is just overkill and the lengthy cure time can be problematic if you have to bond 100 metal hangers in an afternoon.

Well, we're happy to say, we've found the solution for all your glass to metal bonding needs. 3M's DP105 is a water clear epoxy formulated specifically to bond glass to metal, quickly and efficiently. DP105 will cure in roughly 5 minutes after application, so it's super easy to bond your glass and metal together very quickly and move on to the next piece. It will remain water clear for the life of the epoxy so you don't have to worry about any unsightly yellowing of your joint and it has superior bond strength, so you don't have to worry about your metal pieces "popping" off the glass.

We have the DP105 epoxy available in 1.7oz Duo Packs immediately, along with a very handy applicator that can be used over and over again and we also carry some very efficient mixing nozzles that allow for perfectly mixed epoxy to be ejected from the applicator saving you time and trouble in your applications.

We think you'll be very impressed with this newest adhesive addition to our lineup.

We Have a Winner!

Congratulations are in order for Joni Burleson of Glasscentricity out in Denver, CO.

She was the winner of our 1 pound kit of HXTAL from all the entries we received at GAS Corning.

Joni said that she's quite excited to try out some new ideas and products.

We thought it was great to see so many people at GAS this year and so much excitement in the glass community. We really enjoyed seeing everyone and speaking with many of you.

Congratulations again to Joni and thanks for everyone who participated.

Follow Us

We're now on Twitter!

If you haven't heard of Twitter before, then now is a perfect time to find out.

Twitter gives you easy to digest, up to the minute information on what's going on with folks.

In our case, we'll be posting interesting tools that we may be testing, promotions that may be coming up, any specials that we'll run and even the occasional "lightning discounts."

"What's a lightning discount?" you ask. If you start following us on twitter, every so often we'll post a discount code that will be available for only the first 3 people who use it on our shopping cart. It's a great way to save some money and you'll also know about all the cool stuff we're trying to do.

Just head over to http://www.twitter.com/hisglassworks to start following our tweets.

We're back...

But did our minds come back with us?
Probably.
Most likely they're packed away in all the boxes that currently litter our floor.
If you're having trouble reaching us please be patient as we've just returned from both GAS in Corning NY and BeCon in Portland OR.
We'll get ourselves straightened out this week though.

Thanks to everyone who dropped by to say hello to us at both shows. We love to see you and hear what you're doing. It's always great to be able to everyone in person.



-- Post From My iPhone

If you're ever in Corning

Then grab some breakfast at Donna's Restaurant.


-- Post From My iPhone

GAS Corning

So we're here in Corning at the annual GAS conference. Set up in booth 8 & 9 in the tech display. Drop by and see us if you're here. If you're not here, you should consider attending one sometime in the future. It's a great way to learn, experiment and hobnob with glass artists from around the world.

We'll try to post more from the tech display later today.



-- Post From My iPhone

New videos!

In case you haven't been scouring our site on a daily basis for new videos (and you really should be, you know), we have two new videos that we've recently come out with.

One newest video is on using Spherical Miracles and smoothing wheels to grind and polish punties. We even show the VID Bohemia Sintered Radiused wheels and the Polpur Lapi-T wheels in action on a punty. What more could you ask for?!

Not only that, but we also recently posted a video on using plated and sintered core drills to drill holes in your glass and used them to demonstrate how to also use our sink drain hone to prep your glass sinks for your drains simply and easily. Take a look:

In case you really don't appreciate internet video or would like to see our instructional videos at a higher quality. We will also have DVDs available just in time for GAS in Corning. We'll also have them available online after GAS, so keep an eye out for them (don't worry, we'll announce the availability here and if you sign up at the bottom of this page, you'll automatically know when we post anything new via email. How cool is that).

GAS at Corning

And no, we're not talking about bovine global warming initiatives.
We're talking about the one and only Glass Art Society conference.

This year the conference will be hosted in Corning NY. And we'll be there!
Once again, His Glassworks will be displaying in the tech display at the parking lot of the Corning Museum of Glass. Are you going to the conference? Do you need some tools?

Just let us know. We'll be bringing a nice assortment of tools and machines, but if there is something specific you require and want to save some shipping expense, then we'll try to bring it to you. But you'll have to let us know soon before we start packing everything up.

Give us a call or drop us an email and let us know and we'll bring it up (whatever it may be).

Card processing

So I know this is a little outside the normal bounds of diamond tooling and such, but it does concern your business, so we thought we'd post about it.

We just recently moved our merchant services to a new provider through Merchant Warehouse.
They examined our current credit card processor and were able to cut our existing costs in half. You heard right, in half.

They may not be able to do the same for you, but it's completely free for you to check, there are no setup charges and you can gain access to accepting Visa, MasterCard and Discover in one fell swoop and even utilize Authorize.net for online processing. In this day and age, every penny can count towards keeping you up and running, so we thought we'd share this with you.

If you decide to join up, just let them know we showed you the way. Thanks.

A hole by any other name

As many of our customer's are aware, our synthetic felt has gone through a number of changes over the years mostly centered around the ability to perforate the material.

Well, it appears the drama is not quite over yet.

The largest problem is the rate at which fabric perforators have been going out of business over the last few years. Unlike metal perforating, with fabric perforation, you have to maintain a completely clean machine. No oils, no lubrication, nothing that can mar the surface of the felt material while perforating. This makes the process extremely expensive and it's not something that every Tom, Dick, and Harry requires. This leads to a large number of business failures in this segment of the perforating industry.

It appears as though it has happened once again. Our current perforator for our Synthetic Felt material has gone out of business. We have a new perforator that we have found that is willing to perforate the felt material, but the perforation pattern will be somewhat different as we are constrained by the limitations of the dies available to us.

You'll notice in the coming months, if you regularly order synthetic felt material, that the perforation pattern will change. This WILL NOT adversely affect the performance of the material. In most cases, you may actually find that it performs better than before. Just something to keep in mind when you next order your felt.

How to "Stick it to your glass"

There's a question we often get. "How do I get tape to stick to my glass when it gets wet?"

It's a quandry we've had ourselves over the years. We'd do everything from cleaning off the surface with Acetone, to putting about three layers of duct tape on objects when we were using the tape to protect pieces in the Rociprolap or making handles to hold smaller pieces or polished pieces on the grinding wheel.

We never found a good solution for this problem until now. 3M approached us a while back with their 393 water resistant cloth duct tape for this exact problem with keeping our pieces taped up while polishing for 10 hours in the Rociprolap. They said, "Give this a try and I know you'll be impressed."

We were.

We've been using this tape now for over 6 months for everything from keeping pieces together while polishing in our Rociprolap, to grinding and polishing lens and sphere parts on the lap grinder and belt sander. It's easily the greatest duct tape we've ever used.

Give it a try and we know you'll be impressed too.

Like Buttah

Or Buttercut!
Have you been struggling to find a really good sandblast resist that makes it easy for you to cut your design into the resist, yet stays in place on the glass or stone and also removes easily once your blasting is done?

Have you heard of Buttercut? If you haven't, you don't know what you've been missing. 3M's Buttercut sandblast resist is most likely the best resist on the market today and now you can order it through His Glassworks!

We offer the Buttercut in rolls 12 inches wide and 24 inches wide by 30 feet long. For smaller projects, we also offer the resist by the square foot. Give it a try and we promise you'll never go back to struggling with shelf paper again.

Financing now available

So you've found a lot of tools that you'd love to have to complete your shop or start your business or even take your work in a completely new direction, but you don't have the cash on hand at the moment and you don't want to continue piling the funds onto your credit card?

We'll we've heard and responded. Now in conjunction with Direct Capital, we are offering financing options for orders over $2500.00. There are many options available and you can get a quote directly from Direct Capital at no cost to you at all. We've even got a handy little box in the right hand sidebar to make it easy to get a quick quote for funding options.

Just find out how much you need to fund, and enter your information. Our helpful representative, Ryan, at Direct Capital will contact you with the funding options. It's quick, painless and frees you up to concern yourself more with your art and less about how you're going to get there.

Slice and Dice

We've had a number of requests for these tools over the years, so we thought we'd go ahead and make them for everyone. We tested these out at the GAS conference last year and they were a big hit.
Now we have them available for everyone.

Our little sintered diamond slitter and face disk combination makes it extremely easy to slice, cut and grind into areas of your work using just a flex shaft or dremel tool. The slitters come in 1 inch, 1-1/2 inch and 2 inch diameter and are excellent for slicing into work, grinding off small imperfections, getting rid of sprues or whatever else you can imagine.

As with all sintered tools, the diamond on these little darlings goes all the way through the piece, so you can cut and grind with them until they are completely gone (and that's going to take a while, trust me).

New Flex-Tec video

So you've seen how Flex-Tec holds up to extreme conditions from our earlier videos, but how do you mix it, handle it and apply it? Well don't worry, we've got you covered (all pun intended).

The mobile web

True, technology sometimes moves faster than the 'real' world around us, but that's no excuse not to try and embrace some of it.
We were recently at a gallery opening for a local artist friend of ours and noticed how many iPhones were populating the artist community around us.

We thought, why don't we try and make our own website more iPhone friendly? And that's exactly what we've done.

Now if you're out and about and suddenly remember that you need a handpad, or diamond disk, a Polpur wheel or just a pound of cerium, you can call up our website http://www.hisglassworks.com and it will automagically know that you're on an iPhone or iPod Touch and will show you our iPhone optimized version of our site. It's easy to browse through our entire item listing, read descriptions, watch videos and order directly over your phone. I find it pretty fascinating. Next time you're on your phone cruising the 'net, give it a try. We hope you enjoy!

Prices and the New Year

Sorry that it's been so long since our last post on the blog. Things have been hopping since coming back from the New Year. One of the changes with the new year is always pricing.

Fear not, though, 90% of all our price adjustments have now taken place and are reflected online. 3M materials in particular have gone up 3 times since we last updated our pricing on them, so you know we hold off our increases as long as possible for you. In fact, 3M just increased their pricing again on February 15th by another 3.9%, but you won't see that reflected in our pricing to you. We raised our prices on 3M materials back at the beginning of the year and that's where they'll stay for at least the next 6 months (possibly more).

We should have a new catalog ready for you by the first of March, so if you would like a paper copy of our catalog, just drop us an email or give us a ring and we'll get that out for you.

We also had some good news from the folks over at HXTAL. They have a new production schedule in place and we should start receiving regular shipments of HXTAL NYL-1 by mid March. No more adhesive droughts in the near future. That's great news on the HXTAL front and we'll still keep our low prices on HXTAL for you for the rest of the year too!
In other adhesive news, XTR pricing will be having an increase around the first of March to a roughly 20% increase due to the costs of materials. We'll hold the price for the next week or two, but be aware of that shift.

We'll have more to post soon, so keep a lookout here.