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Old 2018-01-26, 12:25am
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Speedslug Speedslug is offline
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Join Date: Mar 21, 2009
Location: Winnebago, MN
Posts: 2,489
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Once you have a kiln to keep your creations from cracking while they are annealing and a steady source of oxygen then you can start shopping for other stuff.

When I started I made a home made kiln out of a 1930's waffle maker heating element and some fire place bricks. I took that, my didymium eye wear and some glass on a 3 day drive down to Florida for a 3 week stay over the holidays and melted glass in the open garage door way.
I bought a welders torch kit there and melted glass 5 hours a day. I still have those fugly beads somewhere but only because my wifeunit won't let me throw them out.


Later I made another "mail box kiln" out of a farmers size mail box, a space heater with the quartz rods, a couple of feet of kao wool insulation and a temperature controller but I was an electronics technician in the Navy for 17 years and I am more than just handy with those kinds of detail. That one cost me some $200 in stead of the $600 that I did not have at the time. There is a thread around here somewhere with instructions on just how to do that.

Its OK to start out on the cheap in the back yard on a picnic bench but when you decide to set up a studio with any ventilation read everything you can about the ventilation needs.

800 cubic feet per minute ventilation is fine for cooking and for bathrooms and green houses but unless you are working in something called a "barley box" (and a small one at that) you really need at least half as much more and twice or three times that is much safer.

Check with the local heating and air conditioning places. Up here in the cold, frozen north folks get new furnaces every 15 to 20 years and they wind up taking the old house sized blower with them to the junk yard.
You could pick one up often for free because the HVAC companies have to pay the junk yard fees to get rid of them.

I don't know how often that will happen down where you live but shop around and ask around. You could spend a bundle on a new ventilation fan but some patience could pay off in a big way.

Remember that the chemicals used to give the glass its color are more often than not hazardous to human health and will boil off the glass while it is in the torch flame.
Those particles then will float around in the air you and your family are breathing and will also settle like dust on every surface within 50 feet where it will wind up on hands and then inside the humans that own those hands.

We have extensive threads here on ventilation and on why 'good enough' isn't really good enough.

If it seems like I am harping it's because I am.
A major part of my time in the Navy was writing safety reports for stuff that should not have happened and it has become a my soap box for the rest of my life.

Happy Hunting.


PS Don't use acetylene welding torch hose with propane gas.
The propane will cause it to gum up inside and eventually disintegrate it into a cracked gummy leaking mess. Also is it will gum up the inside of your regulator and ruin it.
You want hose that is marked as 'T' rated and you can find it near the bar-b-que stuff in the hardware stores.
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Last edited by Speedslug; 2018-01-26 at 12:40am.
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