Secrets of glass production in Kolyma

The deposit on the banks of the Krasavitsa River gave birth to the plant.

The funds of the regional museum of local lore on the history of the only glass factory in Kolyma, which appeared in record time during the war years, have been replenished with new information.

The first to get acquainted with the documents about him were the visitors who visited the temple of history during the action “Night of museums. The guests learned this story thanks to the museum employee Oksana Turulina. This is how it was.

BY ORDER OF DALSTROY

In the late 1930s, the Khasynskoye volcanic ash deposit was explored in Kolyma, and one of the imprisoned geologists accidentally stumbled upon it. Another specialist, a professor of chemistry (the names of both are unknown), suggested trying to make glass from it. And then on May 31, 1941, Dalstroy's order followed, it contained an order: "... during the summer-autumn of 1941, a glass production plant should start working."

But the war began, and the question of creating its own production base arose even more acutely. In comparison with the needs of the region's reserves were negligible. The issue of glass production arose in connection with the need to quickly launch their own greenhouses, for which it was required. So the discovery of a volcanic ash deposit by anonymous specialists-prisoners played into the hands of Kolyma for several decades to come.

The glass factory was built in record time. He himself represented an open-hearth shop. The first brew took place six months after the start of the war. Ashes have proven to be an excellent raw material for glass. Here are some records that historians have found about the cooking process itself:

- Glass breakage was loaded into a 35-meter gas pipeline, chalk and soda ash were added. The glassmakers were excitedly bypassing the furnace and observing the thermal regime, following the arrow of the galvanometer. After two hours, the temperature reached 1300 degrees Celsius and the broken glass began to turn into a molten mass.

BY THE METHOD OF THE FINICIANS

The group of engineers that formed the glass factory during the war years did not have a complete understanding of the secrets of glass production. But there was knowledge of chemistry, heat engineering, mechanical engineering, construction and metalworking. From the material at hand, due to engineering thought, working ingenuity, they designed and invented, erected multi-meter arches, built stoves.

The first thing that the plant began to produce was sheet glass for greenhouses. The specialists were helped in this by the method of the ancient Phoenicians, which our inhabitants knew. The master, standing on a high workbench, lowered the tip of the blowing tube into the window of the smelting furnace, collected a drop of melted glass and, straining his lungs, blew into the tube, blowing the drop of glass into a ball. After that, the ball turned into a cylinder. The cylinder was laid in a straightening oven, after which it was turned over, and it turned into a sheet. This is how glass was brewed in Kolyma.

Ash extraction and processing were associated with certain difficulties: the deposit is located in the permafrost zone, so the raw material had a high moisture content - up to 40%. But, despite this, in wartime, the production of window glass was quickly established. If the first production was defective, then already the plan of the second decade of the second month was fulfilled by 70%. The products were packed in boxes and signed by "Dalstroy Glass Factory". The lead engineer of the project, and later the head of the plant laboratory and the batching shop was a chemical engineer from Donbass Sergey Vasiliev, the chief engineer was Ivan Logunov.

Later, professionals began to appear at the plant - glassmakers and glassblowers, burdeners and engravers. Everyone contributed to the development of the glass factory. Along with the manufacture of window glass, they mastered the production of miner's lamps, glasses for kerosene lamps and headlights for cars, laboratory glassware, household products made of thin colored glass.

The burned out electric lamps were restored at the plant. The repaired were given in exchange for those that were suitable for restoration. Factory craftsmen have mastered the restoration of lamps by introducing tungsten spirals. Then they began to produce high-voltage electrical insulators, children's toys, Christmas tree decorations - colorfully decorated samovars, various balls, birds, cockerels, fungi.

The consumers of the products of the only glass factory in the North-East were not only Kolyma residents. It was purchased in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, in the Kuriles, in Nakhodka, Khabarovsk, Vladivostok, Birobidzhan, Yakutsk. The enterprise existed until 2005.

Source: https://magadanpravda.ru/