Cathedral and Transparent glass

[cmbeene]

Is there any difference between cathedral and transparent glass? I use 90 and 96 coe--of course, not at the same time. I noticed when buying my glass, Spectrum describes some glass as transparent and other glass as cathedral. I am a glass fuser and not a stained glass user. Thank you so much for clarifying these two terms.
Christie

[Brad Walker]

Transparent and cathedral generally mean the same thing, a single colored glass you can see through. The term transparent is more frequently used in fusing circles, while stained glass people tend to use cathedral more often.

Spectrum's website uses the terms interchangeably: http://www.spectrumglass.com/stained-gl ... gories.asp

[cmbeene]

Brad, thank you so much for answering my question.

[Don Burt]

Although Brad's answer facilitates navigating the Spectrum products, we should complicate it because we're on a bulletin board and simple answers are no fun. The term 'Cathedral' implies a manufacturing process rather than an optical characteristic: it is machine made colored glass, to be distinguished from handblown antique, float, handmade rolled glass like Bullseye, Uro, Semi-Antique. 'Transparent' is simply a characteristic of any of those glasses. Cathedral glass can be translucent or opaque as well as transparent. Unfortunately, there's a term 'Opalescent Glass' that is at once both a visual characteristic of glass, and an implied manufacturing process. But none of my categorization is useful because even though I am self-proclaimed World Enforcer of Word Definitions, the usages are inconsistent between manufacturers and one must adopt the usage of the brand being considered. So Brad's recommendation is sound, I'd expect. But I'm right.

[Brad Walker]

Although Brad's answer facilitates navigating the Spectrum products, we should complicate it because we're on a bulletin board and simple answers are no fun. The term 'Cathedral' implies a manufacturing process rather than an optical characteristic: it is machine made colored glass, to be distinguished from handblown antique, float, handmade rolled glass like Bullseye, Uro, Semi-Antique. 'Transparent' is simply a characteristic of any of those glasses. Cathedral glass can be translucent or opaque as well as transparent. Unfortunately, there's a term 'Opalescent Glass' that is at once both a visual characteristic of glass, and an implied manufacturing process. But none of my categorization is useful because even though I am self-proclaimed World Enforcer of Word Definitions, the usages are inconsistent between manufacturers and one must adopt the usage of the brand being considered. So Brad's recommendation is sound, I'd expect. But I'm right.

Better fix Wikipedia, Burt, which says that cathedral is synonymous with rolled glass (either by hand or by machine), and differentiated from hand blown. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathedral_glass

I suspect you're right, but I think it's probably a losing battle. When the manufacturers use (or mis-use) a term in a particular way, that tends to become the definition.

(As for me, my pet peeve is the term "kiln carving" which is neither carving nor done to a kiln.

[Don Burt]

OK. Cathedral glass can be machine or hand rolled. I knew that all the time.

[Stephen Richard]

And just to be a smart ass, in Europe cathedral glass is most often single rolled.

[Brock]

Hmmm . . . sorta like "warm glass".

[Tammy Macdonald]

wait... there's a smart ass on a warm glass forum? Did I miss something?



TAM