Topic: 275 lb (125 kg) white beach glass cylinder

[chopin-liszt]

 ;DI knew it would have needed a LOT of annealling, but not as much as 8-20 months!
Wow.

Has anybody looked at any records of lost and found adverts? Somebody is surely missing it. 

Has anybody any idea if it is leaded glass or crystal?
If the material composition was known, that might help at least age it to certian periods.

It doesn't look old old. It does seem more like modern art.

[ian.macky]

The large blank for the Palomar telescope mirror took 10 months to anneal!  The first attempt famously
failed (which failure is on display at CMOG): http://www.astro.caltech.edu/palomar/about/history.html

There's no way this is just an art piece, and the crystal clear glass is no accident.

I'm leaning towards a blank for some sort of large optical device, a lens or prism or reflector or something...  perhaps it has internal defects and was unsuitable and so discarded...

...but that doesn't explain what it was doing on the beach at Lake Erie.  Why not just re-use it as cullet?

[chopin-liszt]

Art pieces are getting more and more adventurous.

[Anne]

Given all the other info you've found, Ian, I'd be thinking it's come from a vessel that sank whilst carrying it, and it's been washed ashore.  Are there records of ships lost on the lake that could be checked?

[flying free]

On the top/first photograph the top of the object looks as though it has a circular indent in it, as though it was purposefully there for something to sit on it indented slightly to keep it steady perhaps?
Can anyone else see that?

I can imagine a giant (glass?) ball shaped object sitting comfortably on that maybe.  Maybe a large glass fountain type thing?

[chopin-liszt]

Yup. 
Hence garden seat.
It's certainly intriguing lots of us. I can't stop thinking about it. 

[catshome]

I'm with Sue on this one.....completely obsessed with this thread.  It's such an unusual item that there must be someone, somewhere, who knows the whole story.  I was thinking about the weight of it and how it could have ended up where it was found but, without knowing more about the area, I am stumped.  There does not appear to have been much in the way of press coverage since it was found in October 2017.  Really hoping this is a thread that does have a resolution.....there are already enough glass mysteries in the cupboards here!

Cannot wait for the next instalment...

Cat

[chopin-liszt]

I've just found a two year old news article about a small plane going missing over Lake Erie.
But they were into baseball, I couldn't find anything to suggest they might have had this beast with them.

I would imagine the sorts of folk who can afford private planes might have also have been able to afford massive lumps of glass that require that amount of annealling to be privately commissioned - for whatever purposes they fancy.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/31/small-plane-lake-erie-missing-cleveland

But it would appear not to be the only vessel which has vanished in or over the lake.

[Anne]

Might be worth exploring: http://www.eriewrecks.com/eriewrecks/

[chopin-liszt]

I thought if we could find out who has gone missing over the lake we might be able narrow down who might have had this made. 

They haven't come back looking for it, or put out any ads asking if it's been found.
Of course they might think, (if they're not gone themselves), that it is just lost forever at the bottom.