[Talonst]

For the past few months I've been working on using compressed air through my torch - turns out to be easier than you would expect to set up and worth the effort. The picture below shows a Mega Minor running compressed air with propane a 4 psi, O2 at 15 psi, and compressed air at 20 psi

Why, you ask, would I want to do this?
- It provides another range of flames and chemistries with the torch you already have. This translates into new capabilities and benefits including less boiling and scumming of clears (or crayon colors in boro), greater stringer control and a more even and adjustable heat - particularly useful in murrini-making, florals, encasing, and on larger surface mix torches in hollow work where the qualities of this type of flame provide a more uniform heat that makes blowing easier
- Turns out it saves O2 as well. I'm seeing perhaps 20-30% additional time on a K tank of O2 running a small torch and working soft glass. Your torch, oxygen source and working habits are all variables so your performance may be different
- Can be used on any surface mix torch without modification of the torch
- I suspect this would also work well with concentrators - but I haven't tried that yet

Still interested? - Keep reading . . .

Back in June of last year I took a week long class at Corning on soft glass montage with Andrea Gutgesell. Toward the end of that class I had the opportunity to work on Andre's Thüringen model torch which uses compressed air - it was amazing to me how controllable the heat was. From that point on I started wondering how I could modify my own torch to achieve some of the same benefits. After some searching I found Jason Howard's article in Glassline - Advanced Torch Paradigms (Volume 25, number 1, pg. 48 ). In this article he discusses the benefits of using compressed air and the way in which he does it. The article is worth the read and you can find the text of it over on talkglass or if you subscribe to Glassline you can download the article from the back issue section on their website

For the smaller torches I run I thought that using independently regulated gases at the bench the way Jason describes was more than I wanted to tackle. What I was looking for was most of the benefit but with a simpler setup appropriate for my needs.

(Continued in the next post)