Quote:
Originally Posted by Three Muses Glass
Congrats on the Bravo! I'm partial to Beth torches. You mention furnaces but will you need an annealing kiln? Digital is best but analog can be done with much babysitting.
Also, you can buy lengths of stainless steel tubing. There is an online place I've used but can't remember the name. It won't be like a blow tube, tapered, but it'll do for lots of things. Also a clear Boro tube with a stiff color wrapped on the end can do the job too. Maybe some sort of necking tool could come in handy for you as well.
Good luck! Making your own glass sounds pretty exciting.
|
I have two 1500w tabletop furnaces with small firing chambers (5x6"). I been setting a timer and manually changing the temp. I think there is a programming options but I haven't taken the time to figure it out. I use these both to melt, fuse and anneal. I also built a propane furnace/forge out of a steel 10gallon garbage can with a top mounted glory hole (inside dimensions are the same as a 5 gallon bucket.). This was built mainly for melting metal. The main reason I been using the TableTop furnaces is because they get to 2200f which has been good for me when pouring molten glass.
When the time comes for a bigger annealing oven I was planning on using one of those heavy duty steel tool boxes that fit widthwise in the bed of a truck. I was gonna fill it with standard 2400f fire brick and put a better refractory on the inside layer. I have excess of resistance wire and have already sourced the PID for temp control, thermocouple and relay. I would like to build it as a slightly larger version of that Paragon annealing kiln that I've seen a lot of people with. Forgot the name of it but it's around $1400.
Gold Ruby and Cobalt Glass (3 images are of the same piece of gold ruby glass)
Assortment of homemade glass
In the picture with the assortment, the bottom left yellowish glass is 3% by weight gold. This was one of my first attempts and didn't know you needed to further convert the gold chloride to a purple salt.
The pieces I've made are all small samples roughly 30-140g of material. I still have some issues with tiny inclusions and bubbles but I feel when I scale it up to larger crucibles the quality/clarity will be much better. I been doing mainly small samples to test and discover different glass compositions that I record for future batches.