Average work time on Floral pendant?

DRoche · #1 2016-02-20, 9:39am

Been working on perfecting floral pendants for craft shows etc. New to the art (and love it!). Working on a minor torch and two 5 psi /5lpm concentrators. Most are made on 12mm clear rod with compressed colors of course.
Now that I am getting the technique figured out I would like to start cutting down on time to produce. What would help the most since I cannot afford a larger torch at this time. Figure a more powerful concentrator would help the minor work better and hotter. At present it takes about an hour to produce the item. With proper equipment (concentrator and torch) is it possible to get production time down to half hour? items being made right now are single color flowers with a few leaves in background. These IMO would sell in the $20-30 range. Working with boro glass.
Thanks for any help and responses

Daryl

Magma · #2 2016-02-20, 4:27pm

Hello Daryl,
Do you have a picture of the pendants you could show us?

DRoche · #3 2016-02-20, 7:31pm

Hope I did it right! Took the pic with my phone and had to resize it several times . Will add a few more when I get the time

DRoche · #4 2016-02-20, 7:38pm

here's another one

Magma · #5 2016-02-21, 1:50pm

They look great !
I'm probably not the best person to give you any advice on how to make them quicker as i'm not an implosion guy, I've done some before but on a tiny scale.

I'm sure you would be able to make them every half an hour, I also think that 3 per hour is very reasonable.

When I first started my beads took a while to make especially the complicated beads but now because i'm used to it even the most complicated beads i make only take 20minutes at most.

Speedslug · #6 2016-02-21, 2:01pm

I don't work boro at all but I wondered if you are garage warming you clear in groups of four or five.

I am ass-u-ming that getting the heat into the depth of the glass will be taking up the most time so setting up a series of pre-production steps could shave some of your time in the flame.

Maybe one of those stands that I see the Italian Masters using that positions the tips of the working rods in the back of the flame to keep them near working temperatures.

DRoche · #7 2016-02-21, 8:23pm

Thanks for the replies. I have found that downsizing to 10mm rod has helped for now. THe current setup doesn't allow me to run both the concentrators and kiln at the same time. Yeah , gotta get that second circuit ran! Making the marias up ahead of time and garaging them souonds like a plan for the future to speed things up a little.