Help with purchasing a new torch - please

[suziq]

I have limited experience with lampwork. Took one class, have the hothead on a hand torch. Now I want to purchase a good torch with the propane and oxygen set-up and maybe a kiln. Someone told me this is potentially dangerous?????? What to buy and where?

Don't want to spend a fortune. Don't want high maintenance. Any advice here?

I would also like to be able to do copper enameling with the kiln. From my little research I'm thinking the Nortel Minor with oxygen concentrators($$$) What about the Aur - 92's? I have Didys already - could they be these Aur-92's? Are these really necessary? I am very confused. Help please.
Suzi

[Dale M.]

Excellent setup would be a Nortel Minor or a GTT Bobcat. Either on propane or natural gas for fuel and either tanked oxygen or oxygen concentrator for "oxygen"...

Yes it dangerous, but not unsafe, the danger is in the addiction to working in hot glass........

Rose Didymium is the "filter" glass in the lenses of the "safety" glasses prior to development of ACE 202. (AUR- 92 is a product name of Aura Lens). Rose didymium or ACE 202 block the sodium flare ( orange ball of flame) around hot glass bead while it is in flame. Production of didymium glass is discontinued so all that is available is ACE 202. This does NOT make didymiums obsolete. They work just as well as "new" AC filter glass.

Dale

[playswithfire104]

Where are you located? Can you try out some torches? I suggest you check out the "Safty" room and poke around you will learn a lot!

[AKDesigns]

I love my minor and I feel no need to get a bigger torch at all.

[Cosmo]

For working with soft glass, I think a Minor is the best "bang for the buck" torch out there. They are probably the most widely used torch as well. We teach on them, and anything I want to make out of soft glass, from small beads to large marbles, I can make on a Minor.

Yes, they can be dangerous. Anything that creates a flame can be dangerous. But they aren't any more dangerous than a gas stove or a cigarette lighter so long as you use them with common sense and set up your work area correctly.

[Emily]

A Minor is a fine torch. It will work well with one 5 LPM (that's liters per minute) oxygen concentrator. For more oxygen, you can add a second 5 LPM concentrator and get a bigger flame, more like you'd have if you were working with tanked oxygen. If budget is a concern, though (and for most of us it is), working with one concentrator on a Minor is just fine. Concentrators seem expensive, but compared to tanked oxygen, a concentrator pays for itself pretty quickly. You also don't need a regulator for an oxygen concentrator, and since a regulator costs $65-$75 dollars or more, that starts to balance up the cost even before you get to the issue of leasing an oxygen tank (costs for that vary a lot depending on where you live.)

A propane-oxygen torch isn't more dangerous than a torch like a HotHead that operates off fuel and air. You do need to take proper precautions, but it sounds like you've done some homework. You are aware that whatever kind of torch you choose, your fuel has to stay outside, right? The only exceptions are if you use a Hothead with the little one pound cylinders, or if you're hooked up to natural gas. You're allowed to have no more than two of the little cylinders inside at one time. I can tell you from personal experience, though, that using the one-pound cylinders gets frustrating pretty fast.

The other exception to the rule that your fuel stays outside is if you've got your torch hooked to your household natural gas line. A Minor will run on household pressure natural gas. Some other torches of a similar size will as well. (Other torches require higher gas pressure.) If you have natural gas in your house, you might want to look into having a hookup installed so you can attach your torch to the gas line instead of using a propane tank. (If you use household propane for heating, you can get your torch hooked to that line as well. There are people here who have done it and can give you tips if that applies to you.)

As Dale said, your didymiums are fine for working with soft glass if they're comfortable. Yes, you absolutely do need to wear your glasses. You need to protect your eyes from flying bits of glass, and you need to filter out the orange sodium flare. From what I've read, the sodium flare won't injure your eyes, but it makes it practically impossible to see what you're doing, and I'd think it would be very tiring to try to work while looking through that orange.

There's a lot of advice here on -- well, everything. There are a lot of opinions, too, which aren't exactly the same as advice. When you're choosing a kiln, you want something that either opens from the front, or has a bead door so you can stick mandrels in it straight from the torch. I haven't done any enameling on copper, but I've done a little on silver, and the temperature we used was around 1500 degrees. Kilns have different maximum safe operating temperatures, which I think depends largely on what materials are used for their construction. When you're choosing a kiln, make sure that its maximum safe temperature is high enough for your enameling projects as well as for bead annealing. For enameling, I'd think (and remember that I'm no expert, just somebody who has fooled around with it a couple of times) you might want a front-opening kiln. You could try taking enameling projects in and out of a bead door, but it would be tricky. I haven't shopped around enough to know if the height of bead doors varies -- the higher the opening is, the easier it would be. If you're looking at front-opening kilns, there are a couple of things to keep in mind. If the kiln doesn't also have a bead door, is it deep enough to fit a mandrel inside? You definitely want to be able to put a mandrel in the kiln, either completely, which requires a bigger kiln, or with the end poking out through a bead door of some sort. If the kiln is a front-opening kiln, are the heating elements located in a place where you aren't going to poke a mandrel into them? Some glass kilns that are intended for off-mandrel work have elements the whole way to the bottom on the back wall, and if you just open the door and stick a mandrel in, you could contact an electrical element with a steel rod. This is a bad thing. Really. (They're not bad kilns -- they're just not made for mandrels.) I did some kiln shopping a year or so ago with incidental enameling in mind, and found a couple of models that were suitable. There may be more, so you should definitely do your own research, and you might disagree with my criteria anyway. Paragon makes a couple of kilns that were originally intended for PMC, that now come with bead doors, too. I ended up buying the SC-2 with the bead door. It's a nice little kiln, emphasis on the "little." I already had a larger kiln that I use as my primary annealer, and I'm not sure I could recommend it to somebody for a first choice, because it doesn't hold very many mandrels. Sierra makes similar kilns (almost identical, it seems) for PMC -- I'm not sure if they have models with bead doors, but you should check if you're interested. Again, very small, so questionable choice for an only kiln.

The other kiln that I liked from my on-line research (but have never actually used) is the Skutt GM10F -- front-opening with a bead door. It's a good sized kiln. It is, however, not cheap. If you're interested, do as much Internet price shopping as you can, because I did see a good bit of price variation on it.

Setting up a lampwork studio is an investment, no question about it. If you have to do it in stages, I personally don't have a problem with people getting the torch set up and buying the kiln later, as long as they're not selling beads that haven't been annealed. There's nothing wrong with MAKING beads and not annealing them. It's SELLING them and not annealing them (or giving them to people and not explaining that the beads might crack unexpectedly) that's the problem. Unless you're a prodigy (and we do have some prodigies), it will probably be a while before your work is ready to sell, anyway.

[LaurieBSmith]

Wow, Emily...that's a wonderful post.

My only chime-in.....I loved my minor when I started. Used it for 6 years....it's a wonderful torch for the price. (I love my Carlisle now...but that minor is like my beloved first grade teacher...there was never another one just like her...)

I'd like to make one suggestion...something really helped me....get plenty of glass. Don't limit yourself to a ew rods of a few colors....get lots of colors and as much as you can afford. It's very freeing to have a lot of glass to work with. My second glass order started with "5 lbs of white, 5 lbs of clear, 5 lbs of black....." the first order was so small is confounded me.

as for safety, I'm a klutz and flippertigibbet...and I haven't burned down the house or caused the neighborhood to explode...you can do it.

[Diane (clarus)]

Also, don't forget about ventilation. There are many posts in the Safety section with all the hows and whys.

I agree with Laurie to get a good selection of colors of glass along with plenty of black, white and clear. Don't worry about the silver colors from Double Helix and R4, etc., or the expensive odd lots - get some of your techniques down with the cheaper glass, then you'll be able to dive head first into the more expensive glass.

Most of all, have fun!

-Diane

[jaci]

I am all for getting a kiln first and a torch later. BUT I am a Hot Head lover. It is a great torch. I have never used a duel fuel torch... (ok once for 5min I made one spacer bead.. 11 years ago, in another country)
There are lots of people here on LE who use a HH or fireworks torch and make incredible beads.