CHIHULY COLLECTION EXHIBITION TO TEMPORARILY CLOSE | Oklahoma City Museum of Art

CHIHULY COLLECTION EXHIBITION TO TEMPORARILY CLOSE | Oklahoma City Museum of Art

If you have not had the chance to visit in a while do so. Gather some inspiration!

Bad News

I got an email from the folks working on the new crown for the furnace. It is not ready yet. Hopefully by the weekend. We shall see. Looks like we will be down for the rest of this week and part of next.

Are you Experienced?

Have you ever been experienced? Well I have. - Jimi Hendrix

I was not experienced. We needed to fix the furnace. We needed to repair some items in the studio. Time and heat are incredibly hard on equipment.

We turned off the furnace on a Thursday evening. I had ordered what I expected to be the things needed to repair it. A list is needed. The items that are consumable within the furnace and it's workings.

The Furnace - Elements, Gathering Port Casting, Crown Casting, High Temp Bricks, Fiber Frax, Noalox, Wires, Cooling tubes, BussBlocks, Watlow fuse... the folks over at Craftweb are most helpful and with a community of folks with a similar furnace it is invaluable to have assistance of this nature. I too would like to have a guide book or a wiki knowledge base for this purpose.

The Lehr - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lehr_(glassmaking) I ordered the new elements from Duralite. The elements are configured by the company and they sent everything needed for installation. They do not send a how to guide. Not having done it correctly in the past we were not really ready. The element pig tails come up through the lehr wall and need to be covered with a mullite tube. We did not do this and had to go back and redo.

Yolks - We have several yolks now. Rollers for the yolks are available from Steinert. It does require a 3" angle iron to get the right spread on the rollers. Old wheels work well for the bases as they are heavy and balanced and can be moved easily by rolling them around.

Pipe Warmer - Still the process of building. Measure twice, cut once.

Glory Hole and Garage - I have purchased these commercially. Be aware that your time frame and the manufactures time frame may be different from one another. His month looks to be like four of my months.

Layout of the studio floor - This is always evolving. With electric lines and oxygen lines, and physical constraints it is difficult to find the best layout. I believe we continue to make good progress and hope it continues to get better over time.

progress

We have been busy in the studio over the past few days. We have gotten everything broken down and started rebuilding. Things are moving along nicely. Good progress moving forward. We plan on tackling the furnace on Thursday. I am not sure if it will be hot and ready for the weekend yet. I will keep everyone posted.

many thanks for all the help.

The Week Ahead

I know I am missing a couple of folks listed below. I will check the schedule tonight and get it all update on the calendar.

Spring Break is quickly approaching. The new glory hole and garage should be here. I am getting three new fans to help move some air. We will be fixing broken things and making things better around the studio. Should be great fun.

Schedule

Today (Mon, Mar 7)

4:30pm

Robin

6:00pm

Ray

Wed, Mar 9

Blue Sage Studios Anniversery - Founded 2003

4:30pm

Brandon and Andy

7:30pm

Dr. John

Thu, Mar 10

6:00pm

Marty

8:00pm

Allison Demo

Fri, Mar 11

Tentative Date for New Glory Hole

buffalo, round barn , glass blowing 012

buffalo, round barn , glass blowing 012
Originally uploaded by cosmosenfold

I was surfing Flickr today and found this old upload. Long time ago.