Slag Glass

[son of massey]

   I have seen some great points on here, especially it seems recently, of pieces made of chunk glass or of slag.   one post talks about buying slag cheaply at a rock shop.   i have been looking everywhere for this kind of material and it has not yet paid off.   i have talked to glass blowers in the area (for those considering doing this you want a glassblowing shop that works with soft glass and that has a gloryhole, hard glass is just not going to have the waste that we want) but that has not turned anything up.   i have tried to talk to glass companies but they dont deal with slag themselves.   coal fired plants should have slag as leftover but it is not obvious to me what plants would be coal fired and how one would efficiently find them.   finally, rock shops.   is there a more general term that one can search for these things by?   the only hits i ever seem to get are for gravel places or jewelers.   
   hopefully something will pan out, i would like to try this material, but i am not having a lot of luck searching.   if anyone has a good bit of advice as to how to proceed or what to look for specifically, that would be great, thanks, SOM

[mullet]

 If you can't find any,  find a Pottery place that has Kiln's. Some of them will let you melt glass while they are firing Greenware. If not just go to Wally-world and buy some of those cheap red and blue plates.

[Wolf Watcher]

SOM:  Slag is the byproduct where they are making large pours of hot metal using sand as a heat buffer.  The sand turns to glass but not refined.  Obsidian is nature's glass and usually a lot purer than slag. Slag comes in large boulder type shapes and can be all colors.  I think it is the best beginning learning material for beginning knappers because it has a low hardness scale and does not usually want to crush like glass!  It also is honest with its ability to flake in the direction you want and is reluctant to shelf! It is a little easier in the blood letting than glass! The draw back sometimes is that it has voids caused by air bubbles. I like to make jewelry (ear rings and matching necklaces out of it)! The rock shop where i used to get slag received their material from the smelters in Iron Mountain Michigan.
Rock shops often have some laying around as it is used by people in their yards and fish ponds!  Watcher

[mullet]

  I used to get blobs of glass from the Owens bottle plant that used to be in town.

[FlintWalker]

Cave City Ky, over near Mammoth Cave National Park has a rock and gift shop called Big Mikes.  They have tons of the stuff.  The lady that works there told me it was from Fenton. glass Co.   Lots of pretty colors, some clear, but mostly opaque.  I haven't tried any of it, seems kinda expensive to me.  A chunk about the size of a soccer ball was around $15-$20 best I can remember.
  You can look here www.mammothcave.com/big_mikes.htm    Saw Filer