ABOUT
About Molten & Form
An independent, educational reference for glassblowers — built by people who think the craft is better explained by its numbers than by its adjectives.
What this is
Molten & Form is a reference for glassblowers and for people who are trying to decide whether to become one. It covers twenty-eight tools across the five stages of the work, twenty-four glasses with their real expansion and annealing figures, three calculators, and four interactive 3D models.
Everything on the site is generated from a single content model. The figures in the tables and the figures in the simulators come from the same functions, which means a page cannot quote one cooling rate while the calculator beside it quotes another.
What this is not
- It is not a shop. Nothing is sold here and there is no affiliate money.
- It is not a manufacturer’s specification. Figures are typical workshop ranges drawn from published practice, and they are labelled as such.
- It is not a substitute for instruction. Hot glass is taught hand to hand, and no website changes that.
- It is not a guarantee. Nothing here promises a result, a yield or a safe outcome.
How the numbers work
Where a figure is a physical relation it is computed exactly: glass volume is conserved when a bubble is blown, so the wall thickness falls out of the geometry rather than being fitted to look plausible. Where a figure is a workshop rule it is stated as one — the cooling rate is 200 / thickness^0.75, which is a convention, not a law.
The distinction matters. A model that pretends to be a simulation is worse than one that says plainly which parts are arithmetic and which parts are judgement.
Accessibility and performance
The site is plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript with no framework and no third-party requests. The 3D library is fetched only on the four tool pages, and only when it is needed. If WebGL is unavailable, every tool falls back to a 2D version that keeps all of its controls and all of its figures. Reduced-motion preferences disable auto-rotation, particles and transitions throughout.
Corrections
If a figure here is wrong, we would rather know than be consistent. The contact page is the fastest route, and corrections that come with a source get applied.