Making a wood-fired furnace out of stone and clay

[Rockstar Tregue]

I'm new to glass blowing, and I've had a hard time finding all the info I've needed to get a furnace going, they all require expensive set ups.. I've been trying to pick up glass blowing as a hobby for months now, using soft glass on a blowpipe. So finally I decided to build a furnace the same way they would have done it in Rome 2000+ years ago.. The past few days I've been going around and picking up chunks of rocks and broken concrete, and I've dug out a fire pit, now all I have to do is get a tractor bucket full of red clay and mix it with sand and water, build an igloo around my fire pit with windows for gathering and a smaller pipe warmer window, and I'm going to put an annealer on the side that work off acessive heat. I have a pretty good idea on how I'm gonna build it, and if anyone is interested I'll download pictures along the way.. This is a weekend project and I'm not sure how long it will take me to finish and have my puddle of molten glass ready to gather, so far I have a hole dug that I'm about to start lining the bottom of the hole with stone..

Does anyone else use this Stone Age method, or have any advice? For the pots I'm just gonna get nice size flower pots and line the outside with clay to help strengthen them and make them part of my furnace. Also, where is a good way to get cheap starter glass? Should I go to the local bar and get a bag of beer bottles and separate all the colors mash them up into frit and use them as a starter? Are beer bottles or pickle jars soft glass? And for a blowpipe I took a black iron water pipe, cut the threaded ends off it and ground the paint off it and tapered the ends, is there any reason this won't work? I'm determined to make this work, I know I have a lot of work in for myself, but it's just for a hobby, I'm not planning on making a living from it, just for the fun of playing with molten glass, making a few things to give away..

I'm sure the fire will get hot enough from a big pile if firewood burning, but I'm not sure what to use for glass to start out.. But since I'm going through the trouble to make this thing I'm gonna make it pretty nice size..

Hope to hear form someone that has experience with this, I'm really excited to finally get started after months of trying to figure out how to work with my budget..

[snoopdog6502]

I had a forge in my back yard by my anvil that is nothing more then a brick fire pit with a hole in one side to put my iron or ladle in to melt and cast aluminum and zinc.

My set up was adequate for making simple casting and knife forging it was made in an afternoon. I did not attempt any glass but was able to cast metals.

I busted up Yamaha engine cylinders with a big hammer and cast some small pieces and ingots in tuna cans for melting later.

I say go for it, melt a couple cases of beer bottles or glass jars with a super hot fire. Sound like a good time to me.

Take pictures and youtube videos.

Your plan may be a bit ghetto for the glass people here but like you said you want to do it like it was done a couple thousand years ago.
Nothing wrong with that, I do crazy stuff all the time.

good luck and let us know how it works out.

[glassmax]

Hi,

Sounds interesting.
check this out:
https://www.facebook.com/archaeotechnik.at?fref=ts
Those guys do exactly what you want to do.
That site is in german but you see the pics and if you contact them,they´ll answer you in english.

Thte furnace has to be built the way that no clay or other stuff from the inner wall can fall into the melting pot.
You cant take flower pots.The melting pots have to be glazed inside to avoid parts from clay falling into the glass.
The original blowpipes are stainless steel and pretty thick walled.
And you´ll need some some more tools as well.It might be good for you to go to a glass blowing workshop where you can watch the guys and see what stuff they use.The best would be to take some lessons.
You´ll see that it´s not easy and needs a lot of practise to blow glass.
Try to find out as much as you can,learn about the different types of glass etc.

good luck,Glassmax

[Greymatter Glass]

As a project to learn how glass used to be done it's an interesting idea....

I have some concerns tho....


First and foremost is your safety. Large stones and concrete may or may not be able to withstand rapid rises in temperature, please make sure the rock you're using is something that you know what type of stone it is, and what it can handle temperature wise and will not explode on you.

Back to the issue at hand... glass is an expensive hobby, and an expensive career. It's not for everyone. Money always has been a major factor in everything humans do (well, since the advent of trade, even back when "money" was goats and grain). Usually, trying to circumvent some of the inherent costs associated with glass blowing will only lead to loss of the money you do put in - it's a financially risky proposition to start out with little knowledge AND little capital.

To that end, knowledge is pretty cheap. I would highly recommend you buy 2 books that will cost you around $60 combined:

Glass Notes: http://smile.amazon.com/Glass-Notes-reference-glass-artist/dp/1885663064/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_y

And A Glass Blowers Companion: http://www.amazon.com/Glassblowers-Companion-Compilation-Equipment-Glassblowing/dp/0966571304/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_y


Those 2 books contain a considerable bulk (majority?) of the modern knowledge of hot-shop glass studio set up, and also go into historical to ancient methods of glass production. There are resources in those books on how to make your own tools from very affordable materials, but you'll find there's not a good way around the cost of proper refractory materials to build a furnace.

Also, this is primarily a lampworking forum, while some of us have some experience in the hot shop (some quite a lot, actually) we're mostly focused on, and knowledgeable about using torches to melt pre-formed tubing and rod of glass. Lampworking is MUCH more economical and efficient than hot shop studio glass. For what you'll spend on propane in a month in a decent sized hot shop you can buy a torch, kiln, and all the tools.

That said, many of here are willing to entertain wild ideas and attempts at new things - we just want people to go into it with their eyes open, and their safety glasses on.

To the issue of wood fired glass, and bottle glass...

Wood fired furnaces need TREMENDOUS amounts of wood to melt glass. The deforestation of Europe was caused in very large part by the advent of the glass industry. If you have land from which you can remove wood from legally you'd probably be better off putting that land up as collateral towards a loan to build a modern and efficient gas fired furnace. The labor involved in cutting the wood, then firing the furnace is not something one person can do alone and still have time for much of anything else. The cost to build a wood furnace would be, I would think, higher than a propane fired furnace as well, as you'll need mroe mass to build a fire box, and the construction is more complex if you want to avoid wood ash getting in your glass... a simple propane and forced air burner is cheap, produces a much cleaner flame, and takes less work to incorporate into a furnace.

As for glass... the cheapest way to melt glass is probably to recycle discarded glass, but know that bottle glass, while generally a "soda-lime" glass (soft glass) it's not really suited for hand blowing, as it's formulated for automated equipment, and it has hard to manage working properties. Still, melting some bottles in a camp fire is where many of us first played with glass, and I speak from that experience to say yes it can be done, and it's a lot of fun the first few times you do it with nothing else to play with.


Anyways, welcome to the melting pot... no matter which route you take, check out those books (sometimes you can find one or both at a public library, or a college library if they have an art glass program, and usually universities offer community borrower programs very cheaply)

Let us know how things go, post pics, etc... I'd love to see someone do it.

-Doug

[Rockstar Tregue]

Okay, what should I glaze the pots with? I live way bourbon the middle of nowhere, I bought a kiln but I have to rewire my 220 to reach it and honestly this sounds more fun, I think it will be a fun thing tk do for get togethers, invite all my friends over to blow glass with me, it's not gonna be ghetto, just old school .. I was looking at the Facebook page you reccomended to me, that's about what I had in mind. Also what can I do to keep the clay from cracking, should I mix plaster of Paris and sand together and coat the inside so my clay doesn't crack off and fall in my crucibles..

As far as taking lessons goes, I watched a guy at bonnaroo blow soft glass and he really inspired me , he straight took me to school on how glass blowing works, I know I'm gonna have to make a few things like jacks and buy a couple pairs of snips and other tools, but I'm gonna make them as I go and buy what I need , I want to buy a blowpipe soon, but I'm hoping this black steel/ iron pipe will work for the first few gathers, I have recently opened up a jewelry buisness so all my money is tied up in my store at the moment, but if there's a will their is a way..

Also do beer bottles normally melt pretty good? I know they come in a few different colors, if I smash them all up into frit will they melt together into a even consistency even if I use different brand bottles, or are they all the same?

[Greymatter Glass]

mod note: I've merged the two posts into this one, I think this is more suited to the glass discussion than "new to the forums" page, plus more people will see it here and you'll likely get much better answers.

-Doug/staff

[dustyg]

Okay, what should I glaze the pots with? I live way bourbon the middle of nowhere, I bought a kiln but I have to rewire my 220 to reach it and honestly this sounds more fun, I think it will be a fun thing tk do for get togethers, invite all my friends over to blow glass with me, it's not gonna be ghetto, just old school .. I was looking at the Facebook page you reccomended to me, that's about what I had in mind. Also what can I do to keep the clay from cracking, should I mix plaster of Paris and sand together and coat the inside so my clay doesn't crack off and fall in my crucibles..

As far as taking lessons goes, I watched a guy at bonnaroo blow soft glass and he really inspired me , he straight took me to school on how glass blowing works, I know I'm gonna have to make a few things like jacks and buy a couple pairs of snips and other tools, but I'm gonna make them as I go and buy what I need , I want to buy a blowpipe soon, but I'm hoping this black steel/ iron pipe will work for the first few gathers, I have recently opened up a jewelry buisness so all my money is tied up in my store at the moment, but if there's a will their is a way..

Also do beer bottles normally melt pretty good? I know they come in a few different colors, if I smash them all up into frit will they melt together into a even consistency even if I use different brand bottles, or are they all the same?

I don't think you're grasping what Doug's telling you. What you're trying to do is really hard. It's not something people usually do, and that's not because glassblowers aren't DIY penny pinchers. You don't need a forum post to get you started, you need books. Even with the books, it's still going to be hard. You need to slow down, get those books, read them twice, get some idea of how hard what you think you want to do is really going to be, and then come back with more informed questions, if you haven't given up by then.

[Greymatter Glass]

Dusty, I don't think he saw my reply before posting his response to glassmax - it's a temporary confusion caused by the merger of two threads.
Rockstar Tregue's been a member here for a few months now, I think it's a safe bet that he's read a bit more than posted and will take our advice seriously.

I'm all for experimentation, having fun, and doing things your own way... I juts think it's important to keep a few things in mind:

#1-27 is Safety: Knowledge is paramount. Whether exploring new techniques, or reinventing the wheel - always consider the health and safety impacts you could have on yourself, others, and property. Knowing what you can and can't do is half, knowing what you don't know is the other half - how do you find out? well.. you do it, and try not to harm anyone or anything in the process. Without risk there's no reward, but find an appropriate balance.

#28 is Cost: The glass industry, while relatively new compared to other "ancient" arts, is still one that has been refined for both efficiency of cost and time. Anachronistic pursuits can be a lot of fun, highly educational, and worthwhile for want of access to modern materials. Thing is, the long term costs are probably going to be higher for any given scale of operation. While scrounged materials and dead fall wood for fuel may be cheaper up front, long term you'll probably find it's much more labor intensive, and human "man" hours are ultimately the base unit of all value in things.

[dustyg]

Ah, I see.

I like DIY stuff. I like building things, and I always want more tools, so if I can make my money go farther, I like to. A woodburning furnace, though, isn't something I'd ever consider, due to the reasons Doug's brought up. If you do go through with it, please do keep pictures and stuff, it'd be awesome to see.

What I would do, if I wanted a cheap furnace, is just miniaturize it. I've been looking at making a small furnace using some of the information in this guy's videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIRTcmR6sSk .

[BORO]

I would do it. I melted lots in camp fires w/ flat stones to box in the heat... I have seen a rock explode and cause some serious damage.

I would try to keep my glass seprate.. Different glass will expand and shrink more or less. ( coefficient of glass) sometimes cheap glass , even the same brand , will crack apart when cooling ... One shrinks more, and they no longer fit together... Best bet , use bottles from the same case.

If you want a decent product, I would think you need a real crucible to hold the glass and keep it clean at the very least? When the glass is hot , the container can contaminate the glass, making everything crack. some of the correct raw building materials are not all that expensive. soft or hard kiln bricks for example.

Whatever size you think you want..... I would start off at about 1/2 that size.
Will use less heat , takes less glass. Most importantly , it's much easier to form a small piece of glass... Much more than a fist full , it can get out of hand quickly. If it's really for you , build #2 bigger. I bet you find lots of design revisions after running.

I also agree you have not done quite enough research for this project to be sucessful. The questions would be different, more specific. If your going to put the time in , you want to get more out of it than glorified beer bottles melted in a camp fire.

( or you already know the answers , only looking for validation )

Please , please , post pics if you get it going.

[Rockstar Tregue]

I didn't get to read Doug's post until I already posted my last post , I have been doing a lot of reading, but I do need to get a book too! As far as firewood goes, I live on a big ranch and a few of our family members heat their houses with firewood, we only cut down dead and dying trees, but I have a pile of wood from where my dad undercut the forest to make it like a wooded park, it won't take any time for me to cut up a couple of fallen trees and branches from the tornado that hit a couple of years ago.. I have a few designs made up and I know it's gonna be labor intensive, I hope to invest in an electric furnace or gas furnace in the next year, but my friends are always wanting to do bonfires anyways, one of my friends works for a tree service company and brings me nice solid firewood! I'll be posting pictures of my project when I get it closer to finished..

I know lampworking with a torch and glass tube is more economical, and I have most of the tools for that in my jewelry shop, but I watched someone work with a pipe and punty and it was mesmerizing so that's the style I'm trying to work with.. I'm trying to be nature friendly at the same time, I'll prolly only use it a couple of times per month..

[Rockstar Tregue]

I know concrete will explode, I'll try to use more sedimentary rocks for the too where the heat will be.. Thank you all for your interest and responses! I'm going to do this as safely as possible! I think it will be an interesting project, and it will get me started.. I have done a few days of research on the topic, and I'm sure this is gonna be a learning experience.. What is a good material to make crucibles out of? I know they can be made at home.. I live in a small town and supplies are going to be hard to come by.. It will be a week or 2 before I will be that far, I'm just trying to get a heads up, I've saw where people mix aluminum oxide with sodium silica to make small crucibles..

I've been coming to this site a little while, but it's taking me a while to get started, I've read through a few dozen fourms, but I didn't see anything on this, that's why I made this one to see if anyone else was doing it this way!

Thanks for the help guys!

[Rockstar Tregue]

And thank you Doug for collapsing the first post, it took me a minute to figure out how to start a forum on here, I accidentally put the first one in the wrong area..

[BORO]

http://www.talkglass.com/forum/showthread.php?53020-Rocket-Mass-Heaters&highlight=Rocket+mass+Hester

Slightly off topic, but the o.p. May find it useful...

My family farm is in the sticks, cuts and burns their own wood. Put one in the basement ( one of the several houses on the property )

[Rockstar Tregue]

I might have to build a little stove like that, I could see that thing cranking out the heat, I know my grandpas stove get really hot, you can barley stand next to it with the door open.. I'm probably going to put an I-beam at the base of my gather hole as a marver* and I'm sure if I hold it in direct flame it will work as a reheating furnace as well... I made a glory hole out of a metal 5 gallon bucket to run off a propane tank, but it's not quite hot enough to do the job.. I might not have done it right , I used sand and plaster of Paris as a refractory material..

Thank you for your interest in my first post!

[dustyg]

I don't know if glass furnaces are the same, because I've only been around furnaces that ran 24/7, but a friend of mine has a brick pizza oven. When he's going to have a pizza party in the evening, he has to start firing the oven at about noon so that the heat builds up, because it's not the heat from the fire that cooks the pizzas, but the heat that the bricks radiate. This is for a small oven that stays under 600 degrees f. Will you have to start heating your furnace days before you use it, and will you have to make sure to feed it wood regularly until you're ready to go? I don't know - I'm sure you'll learn about that stuff in those books.

Brad Shute is a member here that is more into this type stuff than most. His forums may be a good source of info - they're mainly about building furnaces, kilns, crucibles, etc. http://handmade-glass.com/cgi-bin/conf.pl

[Rockstar Tregue]

His site seems to have a lot of information on it! I know it won't be up to heat too fast, but the glass pots will be on a shelf directly above the flame, I'm sure it will still take several hours to heat it up.. But I doubt days, I'm hoping the clay acts as a heat shield and keeps the heat inside, but the flames will all come up into the chamber where I have the dome the. Go out the exhaust in the top.. If I need more heat I'll just blow a leaf blower in there for a few minutes and it will hear up real quick, leaf blowers always work great for brush fires.. But I think the combustion of the wood will draw enough fresh air to create a draft good enough to keep it hot enough , if you've ever had a wood stove you know how hot it will get! I'll be adding wood to it frequently when I get it fired up, but It won't be on 24/7.. I'll prolly run it about 2-3 days at a time..

[menty666]

I love your ambition, but you might have wanted to sort out a lot of these questions before you started digging.

Also, keep in mind that molten glass is caustic and breaks down crucibles.

Maybe consider a setup like this to start with?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFGiP6CV4m0

Even that, though, I believe is propane fired.

I was looking for a video I recall with a guy from somewhere like Pakistan or Egypt that had an earthen, propane fired, furnace with the annealer bump out, and I found this, maybe write them for some tips?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGGTkXXuEsk

[menty666]

Hmmph


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6U2rOXt75I

[Nomad]

I would just build one that ran on propane like everyone else. Buy the book Glassblowers Companion by Dudley Giberson and build a day tank. Spend $600-$1000/month on fuel. Make like 100 ornaments in a day. $$$$$

[BORO]

must spread my rep before more goes to menty..... (post #19)

I don't know if my cousin wants hot glass in his basement tho?

notice the electric blower next to the heat chamber... may not be as hot in a hole in the woods.

[Rockstar Tregue]

Thank you menty! I really liked the second video #19, that's pretty much a bigger version of what I'm looking to build! And nomad, I'm gonna work on a propane one after I get used to the substance and can figure out how to make a lil money with it.. I just got done gathering my clay, I'm about to start mixing it with water ashes and sand to make a mortar for the stone, and start laying the floor and wood ramp! I'll update more, just gonna have to have patience..

[Rockstar Tregue]

I'm thinking about getting the clay thinned out with lots of water and adding a bag or 2 of mortar mix to help harden the clay, but I think the clay will handle the heat better than just plain mortar. So I'm going to experiment a little bit.. Off to go work a couple of hours in the dark to make some progress!

[Nomad]

I am just worried that your not going to be able to get the furnace hot enough to melt glass. It was a large undertaking that was very dangerous in the olden days. They had to be on an island in Murano so that nothing would burn down the city. Plus they had to have teams of people stoking the fire constantly. It has to be going all the time to get a good batch of glass made too.
I don't even like the hassle of a propane furnace personally. I am a torch worker. I like the safety of buying my equipment and not building it also.

[glassmax]

To me it seems that you still didn´t really understand what an enormous effort and expenses it needs to built an oven that works fine and to run it for a period of time properly.

I come from a family where we blow glass since five generations,working in a cultural park at an ancient glass blowing site in the black forest.One of my tasks is it to explain the history and the differnt techniques of glass blowing from the beginning up to now.

I demonstrate glass blowing at the torch but we also run our furnace from time to time.This furnace is not very big (capacity about 40 kg) but IT TAKES 2-3 days to heat it.And another 2-3 days to cool it down.So of if you wanna work one day only it would take one week to take care about the furnace.You can possibly heat it faster but that would ruin the plaster.
To melt our glass and anneal it we spend more than 2000 USD a MONTH in gas!
That´s the reason why we run it for special events only as we are a non profit organization and could not make enough money to pay that plus the aditional glass blowers wage.
If you want to run your furnace with wood you need TONS of good firewood.And you have to fill it up and remove the ashes constantly.You also have to check,control and regulate the temperature and so on and on..
You won´t be able to make melting pots from flower pots.Melting pots are very thick and not just made from "normal" clay.Also they need a special kind of glaze that stands the heat.You wouldn´t like to have the glaze melting and its always very,very bad if the pot cracks and all the molten glass runs into the oven and so on..
To glaze these pots you need an oven which one´s heat is logically higher than the glass melting temperature.

Btw,do you have contacted these guys from Austria which run a selfe made old style furnace ?
https://www.facebook.com/archaeotechnik.at?fref=ts
As I mentioned they will speak english and you won´t find better Info than these as the do it.

good luck again

[Rockstar Tregue]

I have talked to them, he has helped me a lot, he says inhale the right idea going, he answered all the questions I have and told me how to make a fireclay crucible, I wasn't going to use normal flower pots, I was going to put about 3 inches of clay around them, the more I think about it the more I think in gonna try to make my own soda-like glass from sand around here! I know propane is expensive, that's why I'm starting with wood fired, I have the firewood covered! We have trees laying down all over the forest on out farm, I'm just gonna have to triple the work I'm putting in to save money!

The Austrian guys have helped me a ton and assured me that iwood will get more than hot enough, he said they start with sand soda ash and limestone and they build the fire starting in the morning and by dark the glass is ready to start working. Thanks for the link to their Facebook page!

[BORO]

Thank you for the follow up.

keep it coming.

[Deez]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlrI6TFO-DI

[Rockstar Tregue]

I have a picture of my progress so far but I m having a hard time uploading photos from my phone, should I just wait till I get it done to post pictures and make a DIY page?

[Rockstar Tregue]

So far I'm done with the fire pit, I dug a big hole, about knee deep, and lined the bottom first and the the walls with stones, I'm finally above ground level and I've made a base almost all the way around the ground level.. Let me tell you, this is a lot of work for one man, but I figure if I had the help of one or 2 people to help me mix the clay while I lay the stones I could probably have it done in a good days work from where I'm at now, but I'm not sure how much longer it's gonna take working solo like I have been.. You can expect a sore back if you do this alone like I am!

[snoopdog6502]

So far I'm done with the fire pit, I dug a big hole, about knee deep, and lined the bottom first and the the walls with stones, I'm finally above ground level and I've made a base almost all the way around the ground level.. Let me tell you, this is a lot of work for one man, but I figure if I had the help of one or 2 people to help me mix the clay while I lay the stones I could probably have it done in a good days work from where I'm at now, but I'm not sure how much longer it's gonna take working solo like I have been.. You can expect a sore back if you do this alone like I am!

I would like to see a picture. I sure as hell does sound like a ton of work. By the time you do the brickwork,fire up the chainsaw and buck all that firewood your will be strong as an ox.

[Rockstar Tregue]

69898
This is my fire pit so far, and yea, I knew it was gonna be work, but its more than you could imagine, I'm getting the clay with a shovel on the tractor from clay washouts, same with the sand, so far I haven't spent a penny on it because I already had a bag of mortar laying around..
I'm confident it's gonna be a great beginner furnace!

[Greymatter Glass]

It's a hell of an ambitious project, and even if it doesn't work perfectly the first time around you've already done more than 99% of the people here offering you advice.

Don't let the naysayers discourage you. I think this is awesome.

As some practical critique, I think this is going to be MUCH more valuable as a learning experience than a working furnace. If you continue on your path as laid out here I have no doubt you'll eventually get some kind of rudimentary glass to melt in a pot and be able to stick metal tubes in it and play around and have a lot of fun. Don't expect amazing glass tho, even people who have the best equipment money can buy still have to learn how to melt glass properly.

Keep posting pics.

If you're going to invest some money, make a proper refractory crown for the top, since the top is where most of your potential heat loss will be.

Also, red bricks, while not as good as fire brick, are better than rocks, and usually pretty easy to find cheap (or free, if you have old abandoned red brick building near you that you can safely scrounge from)

Have fun, keep up posted, and stay safe!

[Rockstar Tregue]

I think I'm gonna shoot for making my own glass from sand, the Austrians say they get nice quality glass this way, he told me to cover the crucible with a fire board while I'm melting to keep the ashes out and I'll get some decent quality glass. I'm waiting till I get a day of daylight so I can work on it again, it's been dark every night when I get home, I'll post more pictures as I progress!

So, any advice on neat ways to color glass?

[Greymatter Glass]

The books mentioned above both offer basic glass chemistry, including batch recipes (batch is the mixture of sand and the various modifiers used to form glass) as well as basics of color production.

I'd really suggest you pick those books up asap.

in general, any metal oxide you can buy from the glaze chemical section of a decent ceramics store (not a craft store like Michaels or Hobby Lobby, I mean a real dedicated ceramics shop that sells raw clay ingredients and glaze chems) will impart their respective color properties into glass. You just have to be careful, test for compatibility, and learn how to mix them.

But there are known formulas for specific classic colors.

[Nomad]

Buy some batch and wear a resperator when you messing with that stuff. It is really bad for your lungs. You can get silicosis.
Buy Spruce Pine Batch is the best. You have to cook it for days to get it right though. Then you have to squeeze the glass to get all the air bubbles out. If you use cullet you don't need to cook the glass so much. Just melt it down.
But your going to have a hell of a time using wood fired furnace cooking any glass to begin with.
I tried to build a modified furnace once. It was a miniature. I could not cook the glass long enough because I used a metal venturey burner head. It got too hot and I had to shut it down after a day or so. But I made the batch look like a white ceramic material. It never really got to be glass. I bought a new ceramic burner head from Dudley Giberson . But I never put it in. I abandoned the project. I was making too much money with making pipes and decided to concentrate on that instead of a small paper weight furnace and glory hole.
So like I said good luck with the melting.

[Nomad]

I helped build 2 furnaces at work in the hotshop. I also helped build annealers and glory holes. I was going to build my own hot shop but I abandoned the project. I thought it was not safe enough. Torchworking is so much safer and the kilns you can buy. It is just so much safer.
I decided to just torchwork because of that.

[Nomad]

I would just build a day tank made out of fire brick. Then you don't have to do a lot of welding either. You make the entire thing out of brick except the door. Then you can get a welder to help you or do it yourself. I have a friend who has two of them. One for clear one for cobalt.
He just bought another furnace also. His dad would build and maintain them. He is getting old now. So the new furnace comes with a service plan and installation and everything.

[Nomad]

I would just build a day tank made out of fire brick. Then you don't have to do a lot of welding either. You make the entire thing out of brick except the door. Then you can get a welder to help you or do it yourself. I have a friend who has two of them. One for clear one for cobalt.
He just bought another furnace also. His dad would build and maintain them. He is getting old now. So the new furnace comes with a service plan and installation and everything.

[Rockstar Tregue]

Yea I'll make a day tank one day, this is just my first experiment, and I plan on getting books too, I just have to wait till I have my rent covered for my shop .. I don't have a problem welding, I just need to wait till I get a better job or something goes better with my business before I spend a bunch of money on firebricks and propane, propane will be my project for next year or the year after that..

[Nomad]

Get a lot of written orders. Then borrow it. I have seen people get $20 k in orders at ny wholesale shows.

[Nomad]

Like a month worth of paperweights.

[Rockstar Tregue]

I'd like to do paperweights, bottles, vases, beer mugs, fruit bowls and art work.. I've been doing a little reading and there's a brand called spectrum that sells glass nuggets ready to melt that's supposed to work really good, I might just get about 50 pounds of that stuff and maybe 2 or 3 colors to start out with, and make a few fine silver filings to roll around, can you fume soft glass by rolling it in silver filings?

[Rockstar Tregue]

I got to work on my furnace a little more today, still have a lot to do! But I'm slowly making progress, I have a few jobs at work to finish up by Christmas so that's slowing me down on mu project.. But I'll be back up and moving soon!

[glassmax]

Hi,
We too use these pellets when we run our furnace.
This makes it much more easy to have the same COE always.Thats important if you want to colour your work with pre coloured rods ,frits,powders etc.

To give you the best advice I´d like to ask if you have already blown some some glass at a furnace and how often.
It´s nice to hear that the austrian guys are in contact with you.
I also think that this is a very nice and interesting project,you´re working on and don´t want to encourage you, Just wanna say that it´s a long way to be good (in glas blowing).
If you ever come to Europe,you are welcome to visit our place here in the black forest in Germany.

Here´s a pic
70067
All these buildings belong to the old factory founded in 1720.
Btw,the big log in front is what we used to fire our furnace in the old times.

So go on, have a nice christmas and a happy new year

Glassmax

[glassmax]

Hi Rock,

Found some more Info :
http://www.roscheiderhof.de/kulturdb/client/einObjekt.php?id=17322
Unfortunately in german language again.
Here in Europe/Germany glass blowing started about 2000 years ago.It came here with the old romans.
But we have older findings,dating back to the celtics and even to bronce age.
Check this :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glassblowing
And last but not least here´s another pic of an old style furnace :
70144

go on and feel free to ask if you have more questions

Glassmax

[Nomad]

You should definitely build a bee hive shaped furnace

[Rockstar Tregue]

That furnace is close to what I'm building in the picture, I wish I could go to Germany and visit, you never know, maybe one day, I'm gonna do my beehive furnace next, I'm already almost halfway done with this one, it's getting big quick, I've been picking up literally tons of rocks and clay, so far my fire pit is about 3 ft wide and 3 ft deep, and I have a ledge and a shelf, my rocks are lined up about 2-3 ft thick around the top of the firepit to make a shelf for my crucibles to sit on, the fire is gonna be a pit of goals and it will go up and burn in the open area where the glass is.. You'll be able to stand up in it when I get it finished! Once I get the hang of it and prove I can make a little money at it I'm gonna make a propane powered bee hive furnace! So far I havnt spent a penny on it and I've finally got it connected over the door where the wood will be put in, I'm trying to figure out the crucible situation for when I need them, I might buy them, and I'm probably about to buy about 100lbs of spectrum glass because it's made just for art work, then maybe a couple of kilos of color. I think investing in good glass will be better than making my own, even though I plan on trying to make a batch of my own glass from our sand deposit on our farm,it's really clean glass with soda-lime mixed in with it.. But I'm gonna have clean glass with it, thanks for the help glass max, and thank you for your interest in my project! I read that oak burns 4000 degrees o I know I'll be able to get enough heat going, hickory is even hotter! We have loads of trees down so I'll be using scrap trees, no live trees will get cut down.. I'll post more pictures soon!

[ThreeE]

Find a local glass shop and see if you can have some of their scrap. A guy I used to work with always ran a pot of scrap glass. You have to wash it first because it has often been on the ground and swept up. It is mostly clear but there are many chunks of color mixed in but once you melt it down it turns a really nice blue color. Seems like free is a good option for you. At least to start.

[Rockstar Tregue]

That would be nice! I don't think that we have any glass shops around here.. At least we don't have any hat I know about..

[Greymatter Glass]

That would be nice! I don't think that we have any glass shops around here.. At least we don't have any hat I know about..

You'd be surprised. Not sure where in Missouri you are, but hop on teh Google and punch in the name of your town + "art glass" and see what comes up. Also, "glass dumps" are pretty common, some of the local antique dealers may know of one. Back before plastics and large automated bottling plants were common just about every town of a decent size had a glassworks of some sort that would dump tons of glass - sometimes it's buried under 100 years of dirt, but they're common enough. If you can find one and get permission to take glass, that's another cheap and easy source.

[VinE]

leaf blower.
cut the tops off corona/rolling rock/ redstripe bottles and make pint glasses or ornaments until you can get a better setup. ive heard of people using blue sky vodka bottles too.

[Rockstar Tregue]

Yea, I was looking at sky vodka and bud light platinum bottles for some nice blue glass!

[Nomad]

Buy some cullet. If you melt down bottles you will get a lot of air bubbles. But you can heat the up in your anealer then punty them and flare the lip into a cylinder. Like the Sobe cobalt blue bottles. That looks cool.
Mexican glass is made from recycled bottles. It is filled with air bubbles.

[Rockstar Tregue]

70333


70334


70335

So far this is my progress, I dug the hole a little deeper than I should have so I put cender blocks in the bottom to help vent some air, if they can't hold up to the heat so what, I'll let them break, they're just there to take up space in the bottom so i don't have to use as much wood, I may fill the bottom in even more, I haven't decided yet, I just want the coals to be as close to the crucible as I can get them..

[Rockstar Tregue]

Well I don't know why it flipped my images to the side like that, hopefully you all get the concept though..

[glassmax]

Hi Rock,

How do you plan to plaster the inside of the crucible?
What kind of plaster do you want to use?
What did the austrian guys say about this?

This is very important as you´ll not want to fall any of it to fall into the melting pot.

Glassmax

[Rockstar Tregue]

I'm still working on the crucibles, I'm looking a a few different teqniques, I might just buy one and cover it with clay and set it on the shelf permanently, I'll prolly want 5 to 10 crucibles, a few smaller ones for colors, but they're all going to be set into the shelves, then covered with a fire board to keep the ashes out.. I've seen recipes using clay, Portland cement and alumina hydrate, if I can find everything I might try that, the guys from Austria told me what they used, but he said it took a lot of research, but he told me what he used, but he wasn't definite because I wasn't taking to the guy in charge of the crucibles..

[glassmax]

Hi,
Just like to know what happened to your project.
Any progression?

[Zed]

I remember reading either a art history or a archeology paper that made the case that the glass industry in Europe eventually completely changed the landscape and eventually the economy due to the widespread deforestation needed to fuel glass furnaces. The paper made the argument that glass set the stage for the industrial revolution due to the economics of keeping glass furnaces running, and as a side effect cleared tons of land that was turned over to farming. I forget the specifics but I guess my point is that its going to take a lot of wood to keep your furnace running.

We have a big problem in alpine Colorado with slash disposal. I considered writing a grant proposal to build a similar project but with better emissions technology as a means to deal with unwanted slash, try to get my glass furnace state sponsored. I ultimately never did this because I am lazy, but its still a good idea IMO.

[Swim]

I think this is a super cool idea, but needs some tweaking from a knowledgeable source man. your probably going to hurt yourself or someone if you go full steam ahead with that plan and only a little internet knowledge and lingo. Using words like crudible and frit dont mean shit. There were three or four parts of the whole plan that seemed very sketchy to me, mostly because I know you can hurt yourself real bad with a red max and a piece of 19 mil. Your talking some serious uncontrollable heat, that is not just gonna cool off real quick, or not explode because of....... ten different reasons I can think of, and probably fifty that I can't. Home made materials like concrete blocks and chuncks, as well as pottery all raise alarms for me, I would even research what type of rock you should be using that came from the ground and is not man made. Heat and glass and stone, three things that are not to be trifled with. but I wanna see video and have updates. Absolutely interesting, but it sounds pretty half cocked. Hanging out with a soft glass dude at a concert is just a start of inspiration, not a real good source of knowledge.

[glassmax]

Hmm...
That´s what I ment from the beginning.
You can not just builld a meltinbg furnace from what you think it might be good.
To build an oven that works fine needs experience.If not,there would be lots of more peoplke who would do it.
I am working in an historic glass blower factory and have some 35 years working with glass.So I know what I´m talking about.
As the original poster (rockstar) was so enthusiastic and posted here pretty much I just wondered what happened ?
He told us about his furnace building and so on but what now???
No answer,....

[menty666]

According to his profile page he logged in on 7/10, so it didn't necessarily end him :)

Having said that, even though what he was taking on is deceptively complex and can be extremely dangerous, good for him for trying. If everyone heeded the "Don't try this at home" or "leave this to the professionals", we'd never have innovators or new professionals, so good for him.

I would have gone a little more small scale, but that's me.