Hi All,
As many of you know I recently had to relocate across the country on short notice (form AZ to VA) and leave my sweet studio behind just a few months after having finished it.
Been frustrated at not being able to melt any glass for the last several months so I decided to get going and finish a new studio in our new home.
In AZ I had access to a complete metal fab shop so I was able to easily get materials and have cutting, bending and welding of metal done. But here that is not the case so I had to figure out how to build everything using just the typical hand tools I had, and no navy equipment.
Plus, since I have a lot more room here, I wanted to go with a bigger hood, bigger work table and incorporate some improvements that I wished I had thought of when building out my previous studio.
I think the new one worked out pretty well, and that some of the ideas I came up with might be helpful to others so I am posting some of the major parts of the studio for all to see. If I can answer any questions, or help anyone else to incorporate these ideas, please post in the thread and I am always glad to help!
Following are some pix, with comments explaining them. I'm sorry that some of the details are hard to see - I built all the studio stuff before I have erected the finished walls for the room, so a lot of these show silver colored metal components in front of the silver foil faced insulation on the walls and thus are lacking in contrast, but they are the best I can get for now:
This is a picture showing the whole working area. I have set up a U-shaped work space. For the center table (under the hood), and the two tables immediately to the left and right I used stainless steel table tops from Ikea, with legs from Ikea. Not real expensive, lots of leg room and quite sturdy (vs stainless rolling tables and such) and just a few minutes to put together. The two tables further back are the same size as the stainless ones but are the cheeper plain white melamine covering as normally nothing hot goes on them.
The hood is 6' long and 2' deep and 1' high. It is actually made from a livestock watering tank purchased at Tractor Supply. These are made from very heavy galvanized steel so are ideal to get the hood structure without having to fabricate it from sheet metal. And this size lines up well with the table configuration as the center table is 5' across, and the ones on each side are 2' wide, so I have a 9' wide work area with the center 6' covered by the hood.
I used an angle grinder to cut out openings in the top (originally bottom) to mount the two blowers onto. By using two blowers side by side I get much more even airflow vs. one bigger one. The blowers are mounted over the openings and secured to the top with sheet metal screws through the blower flange, and the edges sealed with caulk.
To safely hang the (heavy) assembly I secured L-shaped angle iron to the ceiling joists, and also to the top front and back of the tank. I then used all-thread rods with washers and locking nuts to extend down from the ceiling mounted angles and then through the tank mounted angles. This allowed me to hang the tank and then just turn the nuts to precisely adjust the height and get it level in all directions.
In order to increase the efficiency of the blowers and dramatically increase airflow, I wanted to add a shroud around the back and sides. In order to do this easily, and without having to fab metal or weld, I purchased light weight corrugated steel roofing in 2' x 8' sheets at Lowes. Using the angle grinder I cut them into an appropriate length, inserted them inside the tank (to make them run from the top of the tank down to the table top) and screwed them into the side of the tank in several locations thru the concave ribs using sheet metal screws. Each sheet was overlapped the width of one rib as they went around the tank to keep them reasonably air-tight. The ribs keep them rigid, and because the sheets go all the way to the top (former bottom) of the tank and touch it there is no air leakage going behind the convex ribs.
Although it is not yet installed in this picture, I have also added a "seal" at the bottom now which is rubber pipe insulation placed along the bottom edge of the panels and glued into place, protected by a shield of steel flashing material just in front of it. All of this maximizes the efficiency of the ventilation by forcing all the fumes to stay under the hood and get extracted.
With this done I wanted to add a way to hang tools right over my work area. On my previous studio I had used magnetic knife holder strips which worked great, but since many tools were not attracted to magnets I was not able to use it on all of them. So this time, I instead used a pair of U-bolts fastened into the side of the hood at each end, and then added two turnbuckles and aircraft cable assembled to fit running between them. This is tensioned to remain rigid, and now I can hang all my tweezers, mashers, etc. right from it. Works great!
I also added a switched junction box to the front for my exhaust fans, and mounted three inexpensive light fixtures from Ikea so that one at each end comes out on an arm and bounces cross-light into the hood area, and with a third one (which is not visible in the photo) mounted just inside the front center of the hood bouncing off the top of it. The combination of these three lights, combined with the diffusion from the light bouncing around inside the tank and off the shroud wall makes for very even, glare free illumination on the work area. These lights are plugged into a power strip, and it is plugged into a dimmer control which is mounted to the front of the hood so that I can easily control them while working.
To finish up the work area, I decided I wanted a better solution to having stable elbow (arm) rests and a table top that is impervious to everything and allows me to marver directly on it when desired.
This part did involve having some metal fab done as I could not see how I could do it myself. Basically, I had a waterjet shop cut me out some 3/16" cold rolled steel in the shape you see. To determine what I needed I made mockups from cardboard until I had the shape and dimensions feeling right and then drew it up for the cutting pattern.
The steel was cut for me (I had it made in two halves so it was easier to transport) and I brought it home, sanded it down all over (to get it clean and have a nice finished surface) and just laid it over the stainless table top.
The weight alone makes it pretty secure, but to play it safe I suggest clamping down the back, or securing it with some Gorilla Tape or a piece of screwed on angle.
Once it was installed, I drilled two small holes at the very front on each side of the seam and used them to bind the two pieces side-by-side and make sure the steel does not shift.
Finally, I wanted a better way to secure my torch (have never liked having a C-clamp in the way) so I marked where the two holes in the torch base lined up on the steel top and drilled the top and then tapped (threaded the holes). After that I picked out two nickel-plated cabinet knobs at Lowes, epoxied one end of the threaded screws into the knobs, and carefully trimmed the screw head off the other end leaving the threads intact. Now I can just screw the knobs into the steel top and secure the torch in an elegant way.
With the work area done, I was faced with a huge box of boro color rods I had brought with, and another huge box of frit. While I was not really unhappy with my previous vinyl fence rail stack, there were two things I did not like about it. First, the storage was too low - pain in the butt to see the rod colors bending over. Second, I hate labeling rods, plus you can't see the labels when the rods are in the "cubbys" so you are constantly pulling out rods trying to find your correct colors (especially with boro where many rods do not look like the color they actually are).
As a result I used the fence rails again, but this time I put them into a rolling stainless steel rack from Costco and used only the middle of the rack to have them more at eye level. I used the other shelves (for now) to hold my frit (until I get a new custom frit rack built) and for extra tools, etc.
I also decided to separate each row of "cubbys" (where the rail is placed with the open end out) with two added rails placed above it at the front and back with the side of the rail perpendicular to the cut ends of the rail pieces below. Although this required buying some more material, and takes up more space (at least for me) it created a couple of major advantages. First, I now have the ability to label each "cubby" right above it so I can see what is in each at a glance and without pulling the glass out, or leaving the ends sticking out to be bumped, broken or cut me. Second, it makes the whole structure way stronger and more stable as now it it has rails running at 90 degree angles to each other in the alternating layers. And, finally, it is so much easier to pull rods out as they are not all surrounded on all sides by other full "cubbys" of rods.
I've got more projects coming which I will post later, but this is what's done for now!
Hope it is of help...
Erik