How can i work boro in a Hot Shop environment?

[Skye Perry]

I am wondering what it will take to amp up a furnace and gloryhole to make it possible to work borosilicate in .Does anyone have any info on building your own gloryhole & furnace for borosilicate. I heard that you can build a gloryhole out of an old gas BBQ and a small fan but i don't know anything about it .Please if anyoneone knows about this educate me . :puzzled:

[Julian]

Ah, well, it takes a lot more heat to melt boro than soft glass - a LOT.
The gas bbq and small fan is not going to work.
Theres an issue of the flow where Marcel very verbosely describes his adventures at trying to set up a glory hole for boro. It sounds feasible, but somewhat ridiculous.
You also need a very large hand torch to go along with your glory hole - I don't know about now, but in the article he described using the 'Melta', a GTT hand torch one ring larger than a Delta.
I'd recommend using soft glass instead - honestly it makes a lot more sense.

[somberbear]

or take marcels class

[boxfan willy]

a few old schoolers tried a boro furnace. To expensive, the boro is to caustic for the pot. Marcel starts cold and uses the special glory hole that cost him heavy in research, time and lots of loot. If somebody wants to work boro offhand style, 33 is not the only COE for boro. You could work 55 coe boro cullet, which is available, and still have shock and chemical resist with a lower working temp. Then just talk Abe into running you a couple of pots of 55 coe color. just my thoughts with no practical application behind the thoughts.
boxfan

[highroller]

Well That really depends on what you are going to use for elements.Sil-carb or Moly-D is the only two options I know about.I think it would be possible to power 3 SiC elements with 220 volt at 50 amps and reach a temp of close to 3000 deg.Moly-D could easily reach 3000 + deg,but require a transformer to up the volts to the elements.I know that SiC elements dont like to go up and down in temp. I.E. likes to come up and stay hot. The more you go up and down, the more resistance they build.Moly-D does not "age" like that,the resistance stays the same or only a minimal increase at first brake in.Moly-D set up for a glory hole could use the same 220v 50 amp and a arc welder as a transformer,but would need some good controls to monitor the temp and to run it safely with out shocking the hell out of yourself. Have fun going to Electrical Engineering School.L8R Todd

[eternalfrost]

heres a thread about building a mini glory hole:
http://www.wetcanvas.com/forums/showthread.php?t=84263

http://www.wetcanvas.com/forums/showthread.php?t=125011&highlight=outdoor+glassblowing+studio

i really know absulutly nothing about off hand furnace blowing lol. Ill be doing an internship at the local hotshop in a few months tho so im excited :) what kind of glass do they normaly use then? I guess i always assumed it was boro. when you mentioned soft glass do you mean literaly like moretti? or just somehting between that and boro?

[jiminyrootkit]

but would need some good controls to monitor the temp and to run it safely with out shocking the hell out of yourself.
just wanted to point out, you generally don't shock the hell out of your self with 50A of 240VAC.....you just die.
-f

[highroller]

Not every time.

[eternalfrost]

50-150 mA (0.05-0.15A)-- Extreme pain, respiratory arrest, severe muscular contractions. Individual cannot let go. Death is possible.
1000-4300 mA Ventricular fibrillation (the rhythmic pumping action of the heart ceases.) Muscular contraction and nerve damage occur. Death is most likely.

From the OSHA Manual

Of course the current through the body and through the circuit is very different, but it dosent take muc to fry you.

[Marc VandenBerg]

How to work boro in a Hot shop environment????

Take your torch, tools, tanks, and some boro to work with and take it all to your nearest hot shop in the area and set it all back up and start lampworking. There you go, easiest way to work boro in a hot shop. :D

[prairieson]

what kind of glass do they normaly use then? I guess i always assumed it was boro. when you mentioned soft glass do you mean literaly like moretti? or just somehting between that and boro?

Furnace glass coe is usually 96-ish, depending on the batch being used, and is also referred to as soft glass.

So now I wonder where or even if there is a coe "dividing line" that defines something as soft glass, or whether it's the chemistry of the glass that determines it?

[marcel]

Skip the furnace, turn your softglass glory up as high as you can and see what happens...

You'll be surprised at what will and won't work. (A lot depends on the glory, some are hotter than others.)

An oxy glory will always be hotter than a strtaight gas/air appliance. The extra heat will allow you some advantages.

[DanBrooks]

to get a liquid boro pot would be awesome, i kinda looked into it once. common refractorie materials used in soft glass dont stand up to the temp it takes to get boro liquid which i figure is about 3000 F most soft brick and frax are rated for 2400-2800F. but i did hear corning had a boro pot that was made mostly out of :pimp:PLATINUM:hotrod:......gyeah. i think the price of platinum is about 1300 - 1400 an ounce . but damn i would love to have some liquid boro to play with for awesome paper weights and such, massive marbles, no bubbles.

but i think that was the whole point of soft glass in the first place, to lower the melting point so that it would be manageable. and feasible to work. thats why im thinking about getting back into morretti and building a small furnace and getting a vacuumed incaser.

does anyone know if the sell morretti batch or cullet? im sure they do, if not i guess you could make some.

[Conchis]

wonder if a crystal pot would hold up enough to melt boro in?

[somewhere]

wonder if a crystal pot would hold up enough to melt boro in?

Not sure what you mean by "crystal"
Some of the large boro manufacturers use platinum for crucibles due to the corrosive factor in boro batch. I do think if your melting cullet instead of batch you can get away with common refractories and a simple alumina pot. If you have any doubt look at all of our color companies.

[Conchis]

I just know that you can buy "crystal" rod that some folks use to fume with. It has an incredibly high melting point comparatively. I just didn't know if it would be possible to manufacture a "crystal" pot and be able to keep the temp between melting for boro and the "crystal." I'm not sure what the stuff really is. I use it for fuming rods though.....

[yinzer]

quartz

[smutboy420]

I know for a fact You can get crucibles made out of quartz. But they are pricy.


I have no idea if it would work or not tho. It would seem once its got glass in it. That it would have to be keep hot forever or else it would crack the quartz pot when it cooled down.

and BTW no one that I know of uses platnum crucables to melt boro. corning uses an automatic stiring robot with a platnum bar to stir the glass But definitly not a whole crucalbe. and definitly not in the size they would use.

The reason they use the platmum bar is because in the end #'s its cheap. Tho it cost like million bucks it never breaks down and always keeps going up in value. So they don't actually loose a red cent.

But you want to talk about melting some hot stuff NOW platnum thats a MOFO to melt and work with. Much hotter then boro. Man kind has over come that and even that is doable.

Platnum is usealy melted in alumia or "silicone something or anouther bla bla carbide" crucibles.
There are also some speshial refactory coatings that are used to line the insides and out sides of the crucibles to keep them from breaking down. and keeping the platnum from sticking. Corning sells a lot of refactory used for the platnum industry as well as for the boro batching industry, Reaady made shapes, bricks morter, pots, and other componits. like burners and elements. All for working boro and even stuff rated high enought for manifacturing quartz products.

Some place some were right this very second there are factorys melting quartz glass and making it in to pressed and cast shapes. like crucalbes and quartz boats used in lab furnaces. Or for extruding in to rods and tubes.

So I don;t think the fundemental ? should be can boro be melted. I'd say from the fact it is and always has been melted ina furnace sence the day coring producded its first rod or tube of pyrex almost 100 years ago.

Tho tubes of boro and rods we all use don't come from out of the ground and they don't come from area 51 or from space and they sure as heck ain't grown on a farm. So its pretty evident boro CAN and Is melted in a furnace. Somewere by someone.

So the fundemental ? should be " Can boro be melted BY THE AVERAGE JOE EASIELY?" And even tho it can would it even be worth it inless you had a reason to do it?

[Mac Maestro]

The tubes of boro and rods we all use .... don't come from area 51 or from space

Shhhh!!! Don't tell my customers. I had to tell them something after the "Triple blown" fallacy was exposed...

We've been talking about this for YEARS. We finally got the black tube (5 years later)
Let's see you resoursefull pyro's come up with the boro CLEAR DIP!!
I love watching the evoloution of lampworking. Marcel you have been repped :)

[jesse dog]

Vince from NW Iron (http://www.nwironworks.com/)just began making borosilicate glory holes. He brought them out for the first time this past August at the EGS flame off. The beautiful part of this set up is it is CHEAP to run...no oxygen required. He and a cat from Cali designed a burner that runs hot enough with just forced air. No shit...check it out.

[Zed]

I don't think the question is "can it be done" but rather "should it be done". What do you hope to achieve with boros in the hotshop that you couldn't achieve with softglass in the first place?

The "project 33" writeup that Marcel did a few years ago made the whole idea seem like a huge waste of time and even bigger waste of money.

Boro's aren't the end-all-be-all of glass, just one of many options. Pick the right glass for the job.

[organicglass.h]

hey skye i didn't read everyones anwsers but i have seen a glory hole made for boro somewhere on line or this site cant remember where sorry do a search

[colonel4bin]

I'm with Altitude, seems like a neat experiment, but has little practical applications. I think the use of a glory hole for flashing is a great idea for large pieces!!, but pots of boro is a little ridiculous.

[Chris Carlson]

i dont know... i've seen Marcel pull almost 15 feet of blingin flat cane... in like 5 minutes...

[smutboy420]

I was thinking for things like cane and rod and tube pulls it would be very practical.

But beyond that I don't see it being the best way to work boro.

[D. dino i ninjah]

I would say the advantage would be that the glass would already be hot in the furnace saving valuable production time huge boro paperwaights 2 minuite christmas bulbs it would def be fun The was a company that made boro plates and dishes in the 20's and 30's having looked at the work at a glass museam i would say they were batching in a tank its kinda cool stuff silver nitriate yello blue dishes i would love to have some but the stuff is hard to find and worth a pretty penny
in any case it has been done so it can be done
peace d. dino