Marbles
Marbles are made using many techniques. They can be categorized into two general types: hand-made and machine-made.
Marbles were originally made by hand. Stone or ivory marbles can be fashioned by grinding. Clay, pottery, ceramic, or porcelain marbles can be made by rolling the material into a ball, and then letting dry, or firing, and then can be left natural, painted, or glazed. Glass marbles can be fashioned through the production of glass rods which are stacked together to form the desired pattern, cutting the rod into marble-sized pieces using marble scissors, and rounding the still-malleable glass.
One mechanical technique is dropping globules of molten glass into a groove made by two interlocking parallel screws. As the screws rotate, the marble travels along them, gradually being shaped into a sphere as it cools. Color is added to the main batch glass and/or to additional glass streams that are combined with the main stream in a variety of ways.
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- Alley Marbles - made of marble or alabaster (alley is short for alabaster), streaked with wavy or other patterns with exotic names like corkscrew, spiral, snake, ribbon, onyx, swirl, bumblebee, butterfly, and...
- Toothpaste Marbles - wavy streaks usually with red, blue, black, white, orange
- Turtle Marbles - wavy streaks containing green and yellow
- Ade Marbles - strands of opaque white and color, making lemon-ade, lime-ade, orange-ade, etc.
- Oxblood Marbles - a streaky patch resembling blood
- Lutz Marbles - a type of swirl, taken from the skating term
- Onionskin Marbles - swirled and layered like an onion
- Clambroth Marbles - equally spaced opaque lines on a usually opaque base
- Cat's Eye Marbles - central eye-shaped colored inserts or cores (injected inside the marble)
- Viagra Marbles - a blue strand of liquid
- Devil's Eye Marbles - red with yellow eye
- Beachball Marbles - three colors and six vanes
- Aggie Marbles - made of agate (aggie is short for agate) or glass resembling agate, with various patterns like in the alley
- Mica Marbles - glassy to translucent with streaks or patches of mica, ranging from clear to misty
- Sulphide Marbles - clear with an object inside
- China Marbles - glazed porcelain, with various patterns like in the alley
- Plaster Marbles - a form of china that is unglazed
- Indian Marbles - dark and opaque, usually black?
- Commie Marbles - made of clay
- Bennington Marbles - clay fired in a kiln with salt glaze
- Steely Marbles - made of steel
- Croton Marbles - glazed and unglazed china marbled with blue
- Crystal or clearie or purie - any clear colored glass - including "opals," "glimmers," "bloods," "rubies," etc. These can have any number of descriptive names such as "deep blue sea".
- Princess Marbles - a tinted crystal
- Galaxy Marbles - lots of dots inserted like a sky of stars
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