In this episode on Tekniq, let us observe the mesmerizing process of developing a ball-shaped showpiece from glass and various other shapes from Himalayan salt.
All that glass dust and so few respirators. No ear protection in sight. Open, spinning cutting wheels with no guards for fingers, feet, knees. The skill is amazing. The conditions are criminal.
The guys cutting huge logs barefoot and no gloves. Unprotected band saws. I have no issue paying taxes for OSHA and the FDA. Not to mention the business added cost of fire escapes.
You can't cut your fingers on the saw blades. I pressed my thumb against such a saw blade, and it didn't make a mark. What's terrifying is that nobody is using gauze masks. Glass dust is _TERRIBLE_ for the lungs! I am certain that several of the workers will develop COPD and probably cancer. COPD stands for Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
You cut glass with a diamond blade they don't have teeth on them and will not cut you like a wood saw blade if you have ever had a cast removed they use the same type of blade and sometimes it brushes against your skin all it will do is give you something like a rug burn
That's a lot of hard and dangerous work. The worker is putting a great amount of force shaping the glass. One slip and it could result in life threatening injuries. Beautiful results with the spheres but dangerous working conditions.
Have been working with glass since 1976 and I'd rather a lot and I stress a lot of small cuts than a big one. Touch wood. It's not volcanic glass it's man made.
@@kafunkalear I'm glad you mentioned that it's not volcanic. It's pretty awful really. Just a bunch of glass balls. I mean, look how many there are, just lying around. I love beautifully made glass but this? Not-so-much. What sort of glass are you working with? I mean are you a craftsperson or do you work in the glazing industry. Glass, as you're fully aware, is not something to underestimate.
The grinding wheels are flexible and the man is wearing cut proof gloves. I'm sure all of these people have been doing this process for years. Just look at the number of spheres in the beginning of the video. They aren't saw blades like on a chop saw or a circular saw, they are grinding wheels and are flexible. It's almost hard to hurt yourself on them.
@@SaccoBelmonte It's probably not that bad, I've seen lapidarists talk about their cutting and shaping wheels--they are abrasive not sharp, and you can tell it takes an enormous amount of pressure to remove material. Not that I'm volunteering...
I'm going to Bookmark this video for future reference. If I ever feel like I've had a rough day at work, I'll watch these Men in the Mine drilling with manual Hand Tools........amazing and much respect to them.
@@_Wai_Wai_ I do. The manuals I author are for field shelters the Military uses. My duties cover setup/strike, maintenance and field repairs. Before this job I worked authoring Ford Dealership Service Manuals. Not sure how I fell into this profession, but its been working out well for the last 27 years! 😉
For me the process start to finish of the rice-paper making was so amazing, I had no idea it took that many to work the sheets, or that when drying that it is peeled away like that per layer.
I had to come to the comments to figure out what they were making. I wish they would write it on the screen but you are doing great! That's for the knowledge, sir.
It would help if you googled crystal ball or something it's not really made from obsidian like the title says, I know because I've flintknapped a lot of obsidian and there isn't and super vibrant colors like this. That's manmade glass they are shaping.
I worked a production job for many years. Machinery working at high speeds. It's fun to look at such labor intensive jobs these folks are doing. Truly amazing hand made products.
When I first see the images, I knew it was in China. Tbh, only Chinese people could work in such dangerous conditions and get out an Amazing work. I'm Chinese of origins btw
Thats nothing to do with respect. They have no choice. Disrespect for the owners of the mines. They should spent some money for personal protection equippment for the workers who are making them rich.
I do tree service for a living, loading logs into the Bobcat and such. That being said I wouldn't bet a single penny in an arm wrestling match against those guys lifting the stone. Respect!
I was just wondering who would buy one of this, I mean there is an entire crew working to make these spheres, so they make a ton, and there must be a huge market.
So much newfound respect for these hard working artists who do backbreaking work with incredible skill in sometimes dangerous environments so that we can all have beautiful things. I just bought a Himalayan salt bowl lamp filled with salt balls and seeing these people working to make these items made my bowl so much more special and valuable in my mind now that I've seen the hard work that goes into making it.
I'm sure they'll be grateful to you as the slowly die from Silicosis. Also, salt lamps are bunk....and the factories and quarries they come from in Pakistan are literal horror shows. But the pseudohippies keeeeep buyin em. Be careful, theyll destroy most things you store near them too, including electronics, books, artwork, paint, carpet and furniture etc etc etc
Incredible skill sad to think the product is dependent on trends and mysticism. When Hollywood stops thinking Witchcraft is cool I fear for the work here
I'd never have imagined this kind of volcanic glass existed. These people are incredibly courageous and hard working. I bet they also designed most of their machinery. But damn, I'll always be appalled by the lack of basic security measures.
That's because there isn't red volcanic glass. Volcanic glass is either black as in Obsidian, or golden yellow as in Pele's hair (filaments of volcanic glass). This is "slag glass" which is glass of different colors made in such a way to produce a marbled effect. It's no more special than colored opaque marble glass.
@@Kalithrasis What colors can volcanic glass be? The color of obsidian ranges widely from common brown-black to orange, green, blue, gray or even near-colorless, and is influenced by the presence of sub-micron-sized crystals. Common textures include flow banding, breccia, devitrification (including spherulites and lithophysae), and vesicular bands. there has been more red glass found in certain areas. not saying this is real volcanic glass but it could be or maybe they made it in the same manner some make pearls by seeding the lava flow.
I have a saltllamp next to my bed they're beautiful and so relaxing too, the volcanic glass spheres are beautiful too and the lady that's making the mosaics is very talented indeed , the paper making was interesting too, all these people deserve the credit for for hard work and skills they have!😊🙏💜✌️
They are certainly talented for what machinery they have available, but often very wasteful of material. There was no volcanic glass - that was all man made glass.
@@buggsy5 I agree, I think they're calling it volcanic glass because it looks like a chunk of volcanic lava due to the colour being similar to lava?🤔😂👍
@newinfusion 0 seconds ago That’s not volcanic glass. The slab they were cutting at the beginning was a glass ingot made in a factory nearby. Later on, we see clear and pink balls being made there as well. You don’t get those colors or that variety from volcanic activity.
@@richardschneider4775 Yea no eye protection = lots of small sharp things are in their eyes, for sure... Their lungs are probably not gonna last long from that either.
Y después nosotros lo compramos en una tienda Boutique, a valores increíbles, sin pensar en los pobres hombres que labraron por migajas. Y un patrón se lleva la gran torta.
The owners of that glass cutting business must hate their workers. Don't know what they did to deserve to endure such terrible working conditions. Cutting glass without any PPE is stupid, or if you have no choice, evil. I hope people who think these crystals provide healing see this.
Lol. Most of the luxuries you enjoy, like your TV, tablet, smartphone, car, etc. contain precious metals mined in 3rd world countries and use child labor and extremely unsafe working conditions. Consider that the next time your dopamine receptors are flooded by the sound of a message ping. My bet is you'll get over it! But yeah, crystals salt balls = bad.
I hate people like you very much, You could say these workers deserve better working conditions, But if you are filled with righteous indignation and think that the small boss of the factory must provide perfect conditions for these workers to work, then you are too naive and ridiculous. There are still too many places and too many people in this world who have not received enough development. At the moment, what they need more is a job to support their families. They should be grateful to the small factory boss for giving them the job opportunity, rather than caring about the relative Secondary environmental conditions, put away your ignorant and ridiculous cheap pity!
No different than mine owners and other types of business here in America. Black lung, brown lung. My relatives died from both. Ignore the Karen insult.
Un material tan hermoso reducido a una simple esfera!? Me gustaría ver las grandiosas piezas y obras que pueden hacer artistas y artesanos con este materia!
Those guys also don't have a volcano. Volcanic glass my ass, this is totally manmade glass. As you can see it comes not only in bright clear reds, but also greens, clear, blues, yellows, whatever someone is willing to pay for. Geology doesn't work that conveniently.
An OSHA inspector would have kittens watching them use the power saws so close to their hands with little to no safety. I wonder what their accident rates are.
Amazing how so much of what we use in life just mysteriously appears, yet we never know the human effort, creativity, (and suffering) that goes into producing those goods! Respect!❤️
@@Ogrematic My point is the average person goes through their lives never fully understanding just how much they rely on the hard labour and ingenuity of others for the materials that enable them to exist. My career involved a profession requiring years of tertiary study, and was less manually intensive. We all share our talents to benefit the whole, because we don’t have mastery of every skill to survive. No one is less than any other, and we depend upon each other more than you could believe.
What I admire about videos like these is that they show regardless of what a person's station in life is, they work to provide for themselves and their families. Where there are no social handouts, people do what they have to do.
Yes. Little things, like protective eyewear, are hArDlY necessary... 🙄 It might cost the employer a whole dollar. There's plenty of desperate people, if any of these go blind.
@@jstephenallington8431 Oh, ever so true. There is often a misconception of what "real" Socialist living conditions are. They envision a Nordic lifestyle although Norway is not a true Socialist economy. Most are more like the living conditions of these hardworking souls.
These young men who are working and shaping and breathing in that rock dusk don’t realize the hell they will experience in their older years from inhaling that dust.
Would obviously be nice if having narrated the video whereby providing some explanations for the origins of the glass, beginnings of the glass being harvested, uses of the glass, etc etc
Someone times we don’t appreciate this kind of art because we don’t know how hard people work for it and there are not even getting 💰 enough for such a hard work, They are the ones making less money than the vendors 😔
Does anyone remember the "aquarium glass" you used to find at the pet store in the 1980's I used to find those big chunks of slag glass to be very satisfying. Never put one in a fish tank tho, and honestly never seen a fish tank with them... Trying to carve that into a ball looks SO dangerous!
Was that in big chunks of green glass? In the 70's as a kid a friend of mine's father worked in a glass factory and had these decorating his front garden
Watching the woman who was chipping away at the blocks to shape out the basic shape of the glass is so very much like the stone age man napping the flints to make the first tools we have ever used.
I've seen this being done at a quarry between Da Nang and Hoi Anh. The sculptures they can make from it are amazing. Most all of it comes from the on-site quarry or nearby mountains. I saw one that was a giant koi fish that was at least 3 meters long and 1.5 meters high. Amazing artistry!
Where in the world do you find volcanic glass that is almost all red.? That’s why I was questioning is it truly nature made volcanic glass or something man-made? I noticed in the videos, but they were starting with look like big slabs that had been poured out and folded over and that’s not natural. I live in Oregon on the West Coast of the United States and our state is a volcanic state and I’ve gone to the Lava beds in eastern Oregon and picked up volcanic obsidian and it’s almost always black with may be a few streaks of red through it.
@@marionfisk7926 There are at least 12 different colors of volcanic glass. It can be dark or black, with some being tan, green, blue, red, orange, brown, and yellow. It can be completely clear or have streaks of one or more colors. The different colors are caused by impurities and/or inclusions. Iron crystals give it its normal dark color. Sometimes, it even comes in what looks like a rainbow. If you learn how volcanic glass forms, you will understand how the lump in the video formed. Where and when it formed also affects the way it looks.
I agree, the slag glass would be way better as furniture components. The reason they are doing crystal balls is to sell them to fools in the New Age spiritual movement as well as novices of gemology and mineral collection under the claim of being a natural material when it is not. The balls are also easier to ship. China is a huge source of scam minerals and gems.
Exactly! As soon as I saw that huge block I said oh my God they are grossly misusing it. Can you imagine what a magnificent altar, desk, table, sculpture, or light window it could be made into, just to name a few ideas?
Here in Australia, you can’t sweep out a dusty room with a broom or even drill a hole in a wall anymore without a vacuum and you can be fined if not wearing appropriate masks and using vacuum cleaners…
silicosis is a pretty terrible disease to get. even with respirators, there is a huge risk for cutters of rock for quartzite countertop production if done indoors. I think after 10 years on the job, 1/3 will get silicosis, and after 20 years, pretty much all of them
Hard to reconcile the amount of labor and strain on the body these artists suffer to produce a single artifact when the person who buys it may have earned the money with a single mouse click. No doubt been the case throughout the ages.
Artists? They're slaves. If you didn't personally hand $200 to one of these people for their so called art then you are the reason they suffer these conditions.
Wow the skill of those men is impressive really impressive to make an almost perfect ball with minimal equipment. I hope they get paid well. It’s an art.
They are tired of life! This is not normal glass that has been in the tempering oven for hours after production. This stuff can be under a crazy amount of tension and explode at the slightest mechanical impulse, like a hand grenade! Anyone who has ever seen a large chunk of obsidian "explode" and the centimetre-long splinters stuck in the wood will get goose bumps at the sight of such dangerous working conditions!
Welcome to most of the world. Even in the west it's only in like the past 30 - 50 years that we've started to even pretend to care about worker safety. Look up the working conditions for miners in the UK as well as in the US up to the 70's and 80's. They were terrible.
@@spracketskooch well we got politicians these days who are working very hard at rolling back worker safety. they do it by calling it job protection: because worker safety "chokes the profits out of business." that's why capitalism is a race to the bottom of the barrel. whoever agrees to work for the lowest wages in the worst conditions gets to keep their job. the only rights they want for labor is the right to accept a job or the right to leave it. otherwise, the employer is your overlord.
@@yaddahaysmarmalite4059 I agree to an extent. Like, clearly the version of capitalism we have today is utterly unacceptable to almost everyone. The problem comes when a business gets too big. The power shifts radically into the employers direction. If it's a small to medium sized business, then the workers can get together and demand certain things. They can actually have an effect because the employer relies on them just as much as they rely on the employer. Also, when the government will step in and save giant, failing businesses, it essentially just strips the workers of any leverage they might have had. Keep government out of business, they always fuck it up, regardless of their intentions. Also, this mindset of endless growth needs to stop immediately. It's literally impossible to grow forever. And if one attempts to grow something endlessly that growth will eventually take over completely and kill everything else. What is cancer but a cell that grows without limit, with no regard for the rest of the body?
I agree these working conditions are insanely bad. That said, this glass is from industrial smelting, not real obsidian. They are scammers for calling it 'volcanic glass', but such is the nature of Chinese gemology. They always pull shit like that.
Leadlight glazier and stained glass windows is my trade, getting a bit to dangerous now with lead poisoning and silicosis. When I first started no PPE (safety gear) was used. A lot of people die to early in this industry. Look up what chemicals are used in the paints for stained glass windows.
