always check propane before vacstack

[STROKER]

well i just wasted a few lbs of color because i was too dense to look at my propane level before i started the melt.:wes:

i was doing 10 inch sticks in 75 mil so i lost a fair bit of color and naturally the only bit of red elvis i had left for a custom order.:bangHead:


got about 1/2 way through the melt and oh shit i am outta gas. fuckme now what can i do besides watch it all crack to shit.

which it did and shortaly thereafter then it fell off the lathe....ughhhhhh. fuck.....

moral of the story, always check your gas before you start something big.:depressed

off to get a refill and maybe beat my head on some concrete for a minute or two...

[Julian]

Yep... check your gases!

a few months ago I was at a shop using their lathe, and had a 10" 75 mm hey/50 mm standard stack set up. Decided we might need some more oxy, and turned on the pressure booster on the liquid tank.

I started melting and all of a sudden, the oxy just cut out! Completely. I looked back in the shop and nobody was near the tanks, or had moved, or could have touched the shut offs to my hoses. I looked over and other torches on the same supply were still lit.

So, I examined the setup. Checked some Ys earlier in the lines, gas was flowing almost all the way to my torch. There was an oxy regulator. Earlier that day I had noticed it wouldn't go above 60 psi, with the screw all the way in, and mentioned that I thought it probably needed to be rebuilt. The shop owner said it worked fine for him, etc. It had been working okay for me, too.

This reg had two B fittings, one labeled HP and one labeled LP (for high and low pressure). LP is supposed to lead to the torch, of course. The regulator was hooked up backwards! For some reason the rising pressure on the tank caused the flow to stop entirely like that.

Fixing the reg configuration worked, and that was that. Thankfully the stack was in a propane holding pattern and survived.

[LarryC]

I dont do these but could you not have put it into the kiln and then finished it later? Just curious....

[Julian]

It's really stressy mid -pull... you have like 75 half melted in, undercutted seals. Garaging at 1250 might work, but you know.

Plus you'd have to do some quick scoring, as the whole assembly is prob. 4 feet long at that point.

[LarryC]

It's really stressy mid -pull... you have like 75 half melted in, undercutted seals. Garaging at 1250 might work, but you know.

Plus you'd have to do some quick scoring, as the whole assembly is prob. 4 feet long at that point.

Ah OK. Yeah that could be problematic :)

[gambitglass]

Damn stroker that sucks. I've had that problem of running out of gas, but never on that scale of a project. nock on wook

got one of your mrbs in the exchange, it was sweet.

peace

[STROKER]

alright back with a new tank of gas and a few knots on my head from the beating.

im off to do another one and try and actually get my day re-started in a positive way.

what a fuckin squid i am...

[BlueLilyStudio]

Yes that has also caused me a bit of stress in the past. I have had to change propane cylinders mid stack before by hand with my wife holding the vacstack and trying to keep it all legit whilst I run to the porch bbq grill and back with a fresh tank to connect, all at near light-speed.

[jac1961]

And I thought running out mid-steak sucked!

Better luck this afternoon J.

[hashmasta-kut]

I dont do these but could you not have put it into the kiln and then finished it later? Just curious....


i got lucky one time, i had another propane tank, as i ran out i heated my pull as much as possible, and turned the kiln on, lol it wasnt even on i recall, by the time i ran out it was at 600 or so so i stuck it in, ran out and changed tanks, and pulled it out and commenced to working, and amazingly got away with it, no cracking. thought i was a goner for sure.

[Bo Diddles]

It's funny how fast you can change a propane tank when you need to. I always feel like I'm part of a NASCAR pit crew.
Tough one Jay, shake it off and keep melting!

[Julian]

A squid?

[B-Rye-oNeR]

I always tell people when I show them how to vac stack " this is something you definitely dont wanna run outta gas in the middle of.!" sorry to hear that, Im surprised it's never happened to me I always run outta gas in the middle of making I0 spoons, usually they are coming out all crappy, and I'm getting pissed like "what's the deal" then I look to see that my oxy is down to 10 on a (mirage), or my propane is nearly dry, gets me every time

[glassdocnc]

Ouch.

Kindly keep your head away from the concrete though.

Jay, have you considered using household NG with a booster? I love not having to worry about running out of gas.

[sasch74]

That's the reason I always have two tanks hooked up, of course something similar happened before...

[STROKER]

hahahahahahahahahahahaha. fuckme...............

the glass gods have decided to pla some evil shit on me today... im wondering if i should have ever got out of bed...

the second time around about 1/4 of the way into the melt the 75 decided to do a complete split and then shoot straight down to the rest of the stack.
i was able to salvage maybe 1.5 lbs of the finished tube but the rest is fucked...

i must of had condensation left in the tube from the cleaning before i put the rods in.

very expensive day in the glass shop.

anyone want to buy some equipment i think im going back to making sawdust...

[Julian]

What method are you usin, pardner? Sounds like you're not preheating the shebangle in the kiln. One of the ways I've vacclestacked allowed the assembly to be stuck in the kiln, the other didn't (we set it up directly on the lathe and used a bunsen). I definitely prefer kiln preheating.

[STROKER]

bunsen. no way to preheat that size stack in the kiln easily.

mehh, its always operator error in my shop.

im drinkin for the rest of the evening.

[Julian]

Time to rustle up a bigger kiln, hombré!

[Izzy Spun]

bro, I feel ya. The othewr day, the samer shit happened to me. Luckily, I had a tiny bit of propane left in the bbq tank. I had to swap tanks, put the bunsens on highh and haul ass tyo the corner store for a quick tank. I get there, and they are outy of propane!!! So I high tail it over to the next store, wait for them to deal with nine other customers, get mt rank, fly home, and....THE TANK WAS FAULTY!!! I damn near teleported back to the place, swapped it out, and got back to the shop just as the bunsens were dying. I managed to save the whole stack, but man was it hair raising. Better luck next time bro.

[hnk]

That's happened to me with a dichro stack I put my kiln to 1075 and it was ok.

[hashmasta-kut]

you musta had it worked in enough or something, because typically a half baked tube pull wont sit pretty in a kiln even at 1100. once ya pull it out to heat they usually start to crack like mad.

[OracleGlassArts]

You should grab a 30 lbs tank for a reserve, keep a big tank full like usual and have that lil guy to switch to if you run out halfway through like that.

Sorry to hear that dude, I almost lost all of a stack the other day, I did a 10" in 50x5 on my sarge, let it get to cold while I was chopping the pull to fit in the kiln, I made a diamond shear and tapped it, the whole back 1/3 split (thickest end of course too.). I ended up picking up the pieces and twisting cane from them one by one off the bench in a rage...oh well it brought me back to doing some iso that came out cool

[glasstronaught]

Almost the same thing happened to me last week. I switched to a new k tank before starting a couple pulls and didn't check the pressure. That happened to be the time they sold be a k tank that wasn't full. I was halfway through putting the color on my second tube when the oxy dies. I don't know if I was more pissed at the oxygen company or myself for not checking the pressure. They replaced the tank at least.

[NiRTY]

A Lesson paid for is a a lesson learned. Sorry you had to pay for this one.. thanks for sharing a fair warning.

All this talk about Lathes and 10" 75mil is some craziness. I have been out of the game for so long, man.. vac stack and such.. sounds cool. I still remember staring at a 2001 Northstar calendar and thinking building up headies from lines down 12.7 was the way to go... hahaha fuckin' onie tube.

Well at least back then when something went wrong I was only trashing pennies.