wood fired furnace

[Zed]

Anyone have any idea how these worked? There is a huge supply of pine wood thats being disposed of here due to the pine beetle epidemic and everyone is trying to figure out something cool to do with it. Right now its getting burned in redraft furnaces with no gain from the wasted BTU's.

[Greymatter Glass]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anagama_kiln

If you have the wood on your property and are already burning it an Anagama kiln would be perfect.

[michaelangeloglass]

http://books.google.com/books?id=p9xJ-VpUuNkC&pg=PA47&lpg=PA47&dq=wood+glass+furnace&source=web&ots=gVtX46v8Jd&sig=aU3YL2_tLagw12doDF5Pyg_S7Bw&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=10&ct=result#PPA39,M1


I've see it before in a video... mmmm... I know that you need to burn the wood first, then you can use those cinders to stoke the furnace, it would be pretty smart to add a blower somewhere? At any rate I think it would be an awesome experiment and you should go for it.

[Mark F]

I believe there is a picture of one in The Glassblowers Companion book which I have but it is at my studio. I can take a look at it today and maybe scan the page and post it later.

[somewhere]

Furnace for melting glass, furnace for heating a house, furnace for making electricity?

I'm going to assume you are interested in a glass melting furnace. I can tell you some things from my experience that I found surprising. Pine will start your fire no problem but you need a good bit of hard wood or you will be constantly stoking the fire. One cord of hard wood will last a weekend in an updraft furnace and less with a blower. You will need two or three smaller crucibles as opposed to one large one. You can make your own from clay or porcelain but small assay crucibles are dirt cheap and work great. They are made from mullite instead of tabular alumina so the price is way less. We like two or three 15lbs pots.
We will be firing up an Egyptian style wood furnace for an open house here at the end of summer. Lots of fun and as always our fourth Friday of the month events are always free. Summer B registration is coming up and most of the help building will be the 16 students working out of the hotshop.
Our hotglass instructor Patrick loves the old wood fired furnaces so it's kind of the kickoff after the summer. Come check it out if you can.
Patrick Gallagher graduated from Alfred and taught glass blowing at Corning. If your in FL and you want to take some furnace work classes check out Santa Fe's community enrichment program the classes are taught here and we have a great time doing it. We also offer a wide variety of other classes cold,warm and hot.


Check out Stirling engines for ways to use that waste heat.


BTW: building a furnace like that will be fun but don't expect to get decent glass from it.