At 06:33 PM 7/30/2003 -0500, you wrote:
>I have seen rough glass 'balls' at rail yards.  About an inch to two inches
>in size and green to green-blue in color (never colorless/clear).
>Apparently shipped in this state (sorta unrefined) to manufactures for final
>processing/remelt/molding.  The 'ball' form is an easy shape to ship and
>unload into hoppers.
>
>Stephen P. Austin


I've seen loads of glass cullett, i.e. fragments of glass left over or
tossed from the glass pot, and found some last week in my garden in fact,
but the glass balls I found and described here, and I think the ones that
were first mentioned are indeed almost perfectly round glass balls, not
angular and blocky.

They were definitely tumbled and look very much like stream tossed pieces
of chert (thinking of Knauderack chert in the Mohawk valley found in the
bed of Knauderack Creek, Montgomery Co., NY and having considerable
evidence of banging and tumbling just as a beat up and well-played old
marble would have.

In other words this stuff was not just glass cullett.  I do wonder if the
foundation I described was for the base of a rotating drum, with the fire
at one end, but we were not privy to any interpretation or identification
of what we were digging and thus I can't say any way.

Dan W.