Hearts of glass
Brother, sister keep tradition glowing
BY BOB ROZYCKI

Glass.

Part of language, culture and products for decades.

Glass of milk.

Glass slipper.

Alice went on an adventure after stepping through a looking glass.

Window glass, tempered glass, drinking glass, auto glass, beveled glass, shower glass, plate glass, insulated glass, bulletproof glass.

The renowned architect Philip Johnson even made a house of glass in New Canaan, Conn.

Most people don’t think about glass until they break one; not so for Charles E. Gillinder and his sister Susan Gillinder.

In a corner of Orange County where the Neversink and Delaware rivers merge, there over by the railroad tracks on Erie Street is Gillinder Glass, a sprawling, brick edifice that has been manufacturing glass items in Port Jervis since 1913.

Today, Charles and Susan are the sixth generation of Gillinders running the company that was founded by England native William T. Gillinder in 1861 in Philadelphia.

Gillinder Glass creations are on display in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Museum of American Glass in New Jersey and in private collections.

What’s ironic is that millions of people pass by Gillinder Glass products every year and don’t give them a second glance. The items are runway lights and Gillinder supplies about half of the lights used in the nation.

Last year, Gillinder made just under 1 million pieces of glass products.

“Putting it in perspective, a machine making beer bottles can make up to 900 bottles a minute,” said Charles Gillinder, company president. “Compare that to a million pieces a year and it gives you the scale.”

“That’s our niche in the marketplace,” said Susan Gillinder, company treasurer.

The company’s niche is exclusively as a manufacturer of pressed glass.

There are only two other companies in the United States doing the same manufacturing, Gillinder said, and both are located in western Pennsylvania.

“There are a lot of European companies still out there in our niche,” he said.

STAYING AHEAD OF THE CURVE

“As much as we make a lot of these traditional lights, these are believe it or not obsolete.’’

To stay ahead of the market, a few years back Gillinder developed a glass dome for LEDs (light emitting diodes).

Gillinder doesn’t sell directly to airports, but rather to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). The reason for that is the Federal Aviation Administration doesn’t certify individual components; it only certifies complete fixtures. “We deal with every major OEM airport manufacturer, both domestic and worldwide,” Gillinder said.

“We make half of the runway lights in the U.S. In a year, there’s probably between new installs and snowplows whacking them down and grass cutters whacking them down, there’s 150,000 of these globes used a year. And we make about half of them.”

In addition to the United States, Gillinder has customers across Western Europe, South America, Africa, South Korea, Australia and India. It also sells to area customers such as Times Square Lighting in Stony Point.

“The runway lights have been in the line for a long time. But it’s really taken off in the last 15 years. It all ties together, (we) modernized our equipment, increased our yields, cut our costs, improved our cycle times. It’s all made us competitive in this line. It’s not any one thing.”

Each type of runway light must meet FAA specifications, from color to light output. With each being made be hand, the plant can make up to 800 a day.

As for obtaining specific color, such as the blue runway lamps, is it a secret?

“I can say it is, yeah it is,” Gillinder said. “It is proprietary, but if you know what you’re doing, it’s a blue glass. Most people have heard of cobalt blue glass. There’s cobalt in it to make it blue. But anymore than that, I’m not going tell you. It has to be the right mix. And as our chemist sometimes says, there’s a little bit of fairy dust in there, too.”

The chemist on staff controls the glass as far as expansion and color. “We make two types of glass, soda lime glass, which is your windows or container-type glass and then there’s the borosilicate glass, which is similar to your ovenware. He (the chemist) controls those compositions plus he controls the color of the glasses from batch to batch. He knows the secret.”

CHANGING THE LINES

Charles and Susan’s father, Ed Gillinder, was active in the business from right after World War II to the late 1980s. He followed the market and kept the factory furnaces burning.

After the war, the company was a major manufacturer of electrical meter covers. “Looking back at the archives, it was a huge part of our business. We also made for a time in the ‘50s mixing bowls for Hamilton Beach, things you wouldn’t think about.”

During the 1950s, the company was developing glasses that had the right properties for quality and sustainability. The plant made glass for military applications, such as shipboard lighting for the U.S. Navy. Over the years, that lighting was replaced by fiber optic lights so sailors would not have to endanger their lives when changing bulbs on the masts of ships, Gillinder said.

“We see a lot of changing from containers made of glass to lighter materials and that’s why we chose to add a lot of value to our product. If we were making the same things we made 20 years ago, we’d be out of business. So we’re always trying to be more technical; ahead of the curve. And that’s paid off for us very well. We’re now attracting a lot of good customers, both domestic and overseas. But it means we’re always learning new skills.”

For years, Gillinder was known as a blown-glass manufacturer. “When we came to Port Jervis in 1913, that’s all we did until the 1920s when we started pressing.”

The blown-glass operation stopped entirely at the plant in the early 1990s, Gillinder said.

But before exiting, the plant made a lot of blown glass items, including reproductions that are now sold in the factory store.

“Glass blowers are probably the most starving of all starving artists… due to the costs,” Gillinder said.

STATE OF THE INDUSTRY

“The glass industry as a whole has been in decline for some time. We see a lot of competition from Mexico and China,” Gillinder said

A 2004 annual report by the U.S. Department of Energy echoes his concerns.

“Competition from developing countries where energy and labor are cheaper is putting pressure on U.S. producers. These difficult conditions are exacerbated by the increasing volatility of domestic energy prices.”

The report also found that the industry is using energy to the tune of an estimated 254 trillion British thermal units (Btu). That’s something that Gillinder can attest to.

The old 10-pot furnace, which stands at the center of the factory like a gigantic brick beehive, was once a standard in the industry. It was used until 1993. Its source of fuel was oil.

There were several reasons the Gillinders wanted to stop using it, the cost of oil being the driving and paramount one. They invested in six natural gas-fired furnaces, which despite their efficiency continue to use a lot of energy since it takes about three days to melt a pot, the equivalent of 2,500 pounds of glass. “We melt 14 tons a week.”

Gillinder looks to get the best price on gas by buying ahead.

“I’m not going to say we breezed through the last natural gas spike, but we also did not impose any surcharges on our customers.”

Wellhead prices for natural gas have tripled since the beginning of the decade, according to the Energy Department. “Significant advancements in melting technology are needed to revolutionize the way energy is used in glass manufacturing.”

According to the report, the department said its goal “is to develop transformational technologies that will help the glass industry achieve a 50 percent reduction in the gap between 1995 melting energy use and the theoretical minimum by 2020.”

DEVELOPING WORKERS

For the Gillinders, finding workers is a twofold endeavor. An applicant must not only want to work, but to learn a skill as well.

“It’s sort of one of the conditions of being hired,” Gillinder said. “You want to be able to learn a skill, right? Move up, yeah? Because we don’t want a lot of people that just want to do the low-end work forever and ever. We want to be able to move people up.”

To that end, Gillinder has a program that follows the traditional learning curve of apprentice, journeyman and master craftsman.

With 70 workers, the plant draws applicants from Port Jervis, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The shop workers are called “skilled craftsmen; that encompasses their work,” Susan Gillinder said.

“We always have a training program going on,” Charles Gillinder said. “Many of our people are cross-training and moving up on a routine basis.” Some of the workers have been with the plant for 40 years.

The way the training program works is one the skilled workers stays after work and trains a group of newer employees.

“A new hire would be carrying glass from the shop to the lehr,” a cooling machine. “Three or four weeks in, maybe we’ll let you turn out for a little bit, take the glass out of the mold, look at it, get the feel for it. Then twice a year, in the fall and the spring, we have two 10-week glass-gathering sessions. So, we’d ask (an employee) to come to that.

Essentially two hours after work one day a week. Learn the basics … learn by doing. Some are naturals.”

It typically takes four to five people to make one item. There’s a gatherer, the one who reaches with the pole into the furnace to gather the glass. The presser, who takes the glob of molten glass into the mold. A turnout person, who takes the formed piece of glass out of the mold for an initial inspection. And the carry-in person who carries the glass over to the lehr.

The plant has its own machine shop to make molds. “One of our modernization programs was to take away the variability of individuals making molds. A computer-generated machine makes our tools,” Gillinder said.

The Gillinders have no intention of selling.

“We’re planning on staying here… staying ahead of the curve; keeping an eye on the markets.”

 

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