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I'm going to try to explain how to identify your glass by manufacturer. I'll also try to define the characteristics of each kind of glass.

Surface Characteristics:

What the front surface looks like.

Back of the Glass:

What the back of the glass looks like but more importantly what it feels like.

Cuttibilty:

How easily it is to cut the glass.

Breaking Ability:

How easy the glass is to break.

Grindability:

How easy it is to grind the glass on a standard grit head, that's slightly used and worn. Not all glass grinds in the same way.

Foilability:

How easy is it to foil the glass, (some glass is difficult to foil because of various reasons).

Types of Glass:

The different types of glass available and what it looks like. The lists here are describing only some of the many, many, types of glass and textures for each company.

Surface Characteristics:

Overall, smooth, with very light texture do to wisps.

Back of the Glass:

Looks the same as the front, the texture looks good on both sides, though the back sometimes has a little bit of texture.

Cuttibilty:

Cuts very easily, except for baroque, which, because of its swirly texture, the cutter tends to follow the swirl.

Breaking Ability:

Breaks easily.

Grindability:

Easy to grind.

Foilability:

Easy to foil, but if the glass is cut real small, the texture may interfere.

Types of Glass:

OPALESCENT: Mainly has a lot of white in it, it has a wispy lightly cloudy look.

IRIDESCENT: Very glossy, each sheet seems to favor a particular color range. Sometimes it as a lot of pinks in it sometimes cyan's. The color is always in the shape of blobs very irregular shapes. Sometimes has a "bullseye" look to it, (like a drip splatter).

CLEARS:

Seedy: Have little bubbles shaped like rye seeds, long and skinny. Makes it a little hard to cut though because the cutter falls into the little bubble trench.

Water Glass: It looks like waves on a pond, slightly wide waves. Spectrum is the only one who uses water glass so it's pretty easy to know whose glass it is by that alone.

Granite: It's hard to explain their granite, they look kind of like very short bumpy hills about 3/8" long. It's difficult to break smaller pieces because the texture gets in the way.

Hammered:They're hammered seems to group together more than others hammered glasses. Sort of a cobble stone effect.

Surface Characteristics:

The front of the glass is fairly smooth the some of their glass tends to be thicker than most.

Back of the Glass:

Generally rough in texture, it varies between colors but there definitely some texture. It kind of looks like the texture of an orange, but sometimes rougher. Also on the Opalescent, there is more variety of color, the color tends to have swirling blend, and is sometimes a good candidate for shading a flower or something, despite the texture.

Cuttibilty:

Doesn't score well, in appearance, the cut is probably there you may not be able to see it though.

Breaking Ability:

Despite the fact it doesn't score well, it breaks pretty well. Though it may be difficult to see the score line.

Grindability:

It doesn't grind as well as other glasses do, you may have to push a little harder if your bit is dull.

Foilability:

Foiling isn't terribly hard, though some of the glass is thicker, so a narrower foil may not work as well.

Types of Glass:

OPALESCENT: It usually has more than two colors (visibly) in it, unlike Spectrum which uses clear or white or sometimes both colors to mix their glass, Wissmach uses three or more colors. The grain is tighter and less defined. There are usually very thin wisps of darker colors, like in gold pink, the front will be pink with darker lines here and there, but on the back it will have more of a poured look. The colors on the back tend to have more variance to it, so if I wanted to give something a shaded look and do it cheaply I would choose Wissmach as a choice.

IRIDESCENT: Their Iridescent tend to lean more to a matte to semi gloss appearance. If view on a sheet of white glass, the tone of the iridescent has an almost silvery look to it. And if you look real close to certain areas of the glass, the reflection of the coating may have a butterfly scale look to it. On colored glass the colors are breathtaking.

CLEARS:

Ripple:looks a lot like Kokomo's ripple though flatter in appearance. The ridges are rather bumpy like coarsely rumpled fabric, but in a neat non random sort of way.

Cathedrals: The colors aren't as pure as they could be, not as much sparkle as other glass does. The back of the glass is usually rough in texture (visually), it may look like it's slightly pitted. So it may be difficult to use if you wanted a two sided object with smooth looking sides. Even though there is a texture it's still considered a smooth glass.

Hammered: Their hammered looks like little even lumps on the surface of the glass. Kind of like ball peen marks on the non-dented in side. Hence the name hammered. This glass has a nice sparkle effect and is a good suncatchers glass.

Seedy: the bubbles inside the glass are always round in shape.

Surface Characteristics:

The front is generally smooth, though if you let the light hit it right, it may have a very faint surface chill that tends to resemble a scaly appearance. Sometimes the glass may be warped more than other companies. It also tends to be more brittle. For some reason (at least in the shops in my area anyway) the glass always seems to be cut in a 12"x12" square.

Back of the Glass:

Tends to be very rough (at least on opaque colors). When you first buy it in the store the back is always the dirtiest, I'm not sure why though, it just always is.

Cuttibilty:

It does score well, or at least it takes a score well, you may find that on certain cuts it may stray. The glass also may be bent in some places of the glass, which may break the glass.

Breaking Ability:

It breaks fairly well, inside curves may be difficult.

Grindability:

It grinds pretty easily.

Foilability:

The glass tends to thicker for certain colors.

Types of Glass:

OPALESCENT: Tends to have more of a tight grain on the front of the glass, it much wilder on the back. Generally you can see 3-4 colors when you first look at it. Like it may have 3 shades of blue and a shade of white for one mix. Their colors are very striking and bold. The wispy glasses tend to have sharp streaks of color. For example they have an orange/red cathedral that looks kind of like fire. The background is orange and there are vivid streaks of dark orange and red. I used it for an autumn leaf.

IRIDESCENT:This is my favorite of all iridescent's in my price range. The coating is a semi-gloss to matte it looks a lot like Wissmach (sometimes it's difficult to tell them apart). The colors tend to look spray painted on (in stripes). When looking directly at it, the colors will show up, without you doing the iridescent dance to see all the colors. Spectrum, on the other hand, although nice to look at, you really have to move around the rainbow. This glass can be a great mix glass, meaning it can easily slip into a project that, say, has spectrum iridescent in it. This glass has a different surface tone to it. When mixing the two different types of irridescents together, the reflection of the surface will appear differently. (A surface with the same shine to it, will blend together if you look at it's reflected surface).

CLEARS:It tends to look a lot like Wissmach in most ways, it's hard to tell them apart, but Armstrong tends to me a little thinner in "thickness," it tends to lean more towards normal.

Surface Characteristics:

Smooth, though if you were to look at its reflection, it may have a slight shiny hazy look to it. Sometimes it may have a slight blistered look to it. Or a wax paper effect. The thickness tends to be thinner than the average glass.

Back of the Glass:

Similar to the front only a little rougher. Sometimes there's a kind of scale look to the glass almost like a wood with a wild grain (like a burl).

Cuttibilty:

The cutter tends to want to slide side to side more, it just doesn't seem to want to "bite" into the glass. Moderate pressure may not me enough to hear or see a score.

Breaking Ability:

It breaks very well, on almost every type of cut. Though some textures like ripple are hard to break because it's difficult to hold onto it with pliers.

Grindability:

The smooth glass isn't that hard to grind, though it tends to lean towards the harder side. It could get ugly when grinding ripple glass, the ripples tend to poke and cut easily. If you're going to grind Kokomo ripple, first lightly grind the edges to knock off the knife edges, then do the trimming.

Foilability:

As mentioned before the glass is thinner so if your using 3/16" foil the solder lines are going to be wider, unlike Wissmach, in which the lines will be thinner. And again the ripple glass is the hardest to foil. You have 2 choices when foiling ripple: 1. You can lightly crimp the edges without pushing it into the valleys, but that's kind of ugly looking. Or 2. Push it into every nook and cranny, it takes a long time, but well worth it, (neater solder lines).

Types of Glass:

OPALESCENT:This is a good "shading glass", Tiffany used it for a lot of his windows, in one sheet you can get all of the light colors and dark colors along with the mid tones. The streaks go from being really tiny and wispy, to big giant blobs. When held up to the light though sometimes the color tends to wash out in certain colors. The back of the glass tends look like the front only slightly more muted.

IRIDESCENT: Looks a lot like spectrum, shiny though it seems to sparkle more. I used Kokomo ripple irr, for the blue Morpho butterfly on my butterfly panel (impossible to see though). By the way, that glass though a pain to work with made a perfect butterfly.

Surface Characteristics:

The front of the glass is sometimes shiny and sometimes like wax paper. The surface itself looks a bit like plastic wrap, slightly wrinkled.

Back of glass:

The back is a little more wrinkled. From what I can tell from my sample set, all the glass has little mottles on the back.

Cuttibilty:

It's a soft glass, and it scores better then you think. I wouldn't recommend a novice to cut it though. The glass can be lumpy in places and even warped. And because it's so expensive you wouldn't want to take the chance to mess it up.

Breaking Ability:

It breaks fairly well. Inside cuts are a little harder, it tends to flair more. If you don't score it well enough, the break may stray. It also isn't easy to cut thin strips with it, like 1/4" and under.

Grindability:

It's easy to grind. However depending on where you cut the glass it may rock a little. And because it's soft, it will chip a little more. And if you made that inside cut, you may cut deeper into your thumb then you wanted to originally.

Foilability:

Fair. The thickness varies a little, and the glass may seem warped at times, which makes it difficult to foil. The thickness is about 1/8". Thicker if it's ripple.

Types of Glass: Youghiogheny has a different listing of their glasses, these are them:

High Strike: It's a fancy way of saying streaky opalescent. High strike has much more vivid lines compared to the reproduction glass. The colors aren't as distributed as well, it may be heavy in certain colors on one side of the glass. This glass could make some nice sunsets and has shading abilities. The mottles on the back have a white outline on them, and the center is dark.

Reproduction Glass: It's another opalescent, only the colors are a bit more muted. The mottles on the back are a more solid white, center too.

Stipple: Youghiogheny is the only company that I know of who makes this type of glass. If you hold up a piece of stipple to the light, the entire sheet will glow with light. The look is hard to explain. If you know of the soda Fresca (the grapefruit soda), that's the color. In fact the white is the exact same color as Fresca. Or hold a section of an orange to the light (peeled), pay attention to how the light disperses, that's what stipple is like. Stipple is used allot in lamps, it doesn't allow light to have a hot spot. In a normal piece of clear glass, if you hold it to the light, you will still see the bulb. If you hold a more solid piece of glass to the light, you may not see anything at all. If you hold a piece of stipple up you'll get color with no bulb shape behind. Stipple comes in clear, and opalescent. It's best used for water, trees, and anything with a shadow pattern.

CLEARS: I only have one piece, the back has faint lines that look a bit like scores that's been melted. otherwise the back is very smooth.

Ripples: The ripple varies quite a bit, and it isn't consistent on every piece. It looks kind of like ripple water. Or an extreme close up a finger print. This glass would probably make a good river or waterfall.

Iridescent: They don't have allot of iridescent, or at least they didn't in my sample set. The colors are in rainbow. It has a matt look to it, and it isn't very strong. Putting a little water on it makes the iridescent's disappear (not permanently though).

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Started on 1-27-99