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.
1 comment:
fun to read post very good
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