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Old 2017-03-06, 8:26pm
Larboro43 Larboro43 is offline
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Join Date: Mar 03, 2017
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Quote:
Originally Posted by earthandsky View Post
Soft glass or boro? What is your oxygen source?

After the Hothead, I went to the Minor. It's a great torch and many beadmakers use it.

I wanted something with more radiant heat, so I got a Hellcat, which has the Mini CC as its center fire. It is an oxygen hog and I use two 8lpm oxygen concentrators with it. I turn on the third oxycon when I'm also running the outer fire.

I tried the Bethlehem Alpha (and Bravo) at the Gathering and quickly decided that if I was beginning beadmaking today, I'd go with the Alpha. This new generation of Bethlehem torches were designed with oxygen concentrators in mind, which is great for us that use them.

If you want to use boro and have functional glass in mind, I'd go bigger and get the Cheetah. The advantage is that GTT holds its value pretty well, so if you want to upgrade later, you probably won't take much of a loss selling it.

But any of those torches will easily make small hollow beads and vessels from soft glass. Boro will just take longer.
I'm going to start with soft first but I eventually want to get to a bigger torch and to boro but due to financial reasons and mostly because I've been itching to melt. I used to work for a production glass company were they used boro and Carlisle ccs

And I eventually do want to get a oxy con when the money is right..that's why I haven't really looked into them. In the old shop they only had tanks soo that's what I was thinking about doing what. Thanks for the advice by the way
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