Whereas the method of fully automatic candle holders production only partly imitates hand operation, modern engineers and technologists have, so far, been unable to invent a method which does not exactly follow the method used by the skilled glassmaker. Let us first examine how thin-walled tumblers are made and then look at the more complicated automatic production of stemmed candle holders.

 From the glass melting tank furnace protrude the froe hearths to condition the glass. Each fore hearth supplies glass to a large, continuously rotating machine. Feeding of the candle holders to the machine is done by suction. This idea is similar to the vacuum method used foe bottle production except that the glass is not sucked into a parison in which it is blown, but into a cavity which is in the shape of a gather to be placed on top of a spindle, which can be compared to a glassmaker’s blowing iron. This operation is done by means of a ram (moveable) with two cavities connected to a vacuum line at its end. The ram moves to the fore heart and just dips into the candle holders. Glass is sucked into the cavities lifted out and on its way back to other machine, a knife blade cuts off a ribbon of glass trailing from it, leaving the required amount of glass in the cavities. The two lamps of molten glass are placed on top of the waiting spindles. There is no rotating pot as on a suction bottle machine and the problem of chilling the glass is overcome by a radial movement of the ram, which pushes the cold glass away from the point from which the next set of gathers will be collected. The machine then continues to imitate the glassmaker. The spindles rotate and a puff of air starts a bubble. The rotating spindles, with the glass at the top slowly turn through a semi-circle from a vertical up position to vertical down and so enable the glass to become elongated to the correct parison shape.

 The parison are then enclosed in the blow mould. The blow moulds are kept wet and the spindles continue to rotate while the final blowing is done. The moulds then open, the article is released and very fierce small flames burn off the top. The candle holders are pushed into an annealing lehr at the end of which they are inspected, packed and dispatched.