cane cup by-product

when you pull cane the aim is to have most of it one nice continuous thickness, and sometimes it works like this for me. but other times either end of the cane will be fatter than the rest of the cane all because the final heat was not right. from each cane pull you learn how you might do a better one next time if you pay attention. anyways the dilemma is what to do with the fat parts. they are still often quite nice looking but too fat to pick up and make into a cup. some thicker ones i save and will do a roll up and make something larger than a cup, but there are bits of cane too fat for this. i didn't want to throw them away, and have recently realised that i can use this fat cane to make marbles.

to make a marble you pick up the fat cane on a punti, and then use a metal melon-baller and jacks to make nice round marbles. they require a bit of cold working and polishing afterwards to make them round and finished but otherwise they are pretty simple to make. not sure what i will do with these yet but they are more useful and fun than fat bits of cane.