Crucible Furnace Sales.

**Abe Fleishman** · 04-15-2011, 11:11 AM

We are offering some great deals on some crucible furnaces.
The first one is a skutt unit that has been tried and true for over 3 years, Northstar Glass has worked with Skutt to offer you guys a great unit to melt BORO or SOFT glass. Please go and check out the unit we are offering.

http://www.skutt.com/glass/proseries...cate/index.php

We are offering these units on SALE for $1800 plus shipping, we can also supply crucibles and scraping tools. Crucibles are $100 for a 30 lbs and the scraping tools are also on sale for $250. This furnace can hold small and large crucibles the chamber will hold a crucible that holds up to 80 lbs.

Now on to the next unit made for Northstar exclusivly by Paragon.
The Darby Dipper is a single man or women unit that holds 10 lbs of Boro this unit comes in 120 volt 20 amps and 240 10 amps. The retail on this unit is $1200 and we are offering it on sale right now for $1050. The small crucibles are ONLY $35 per.

I will be posting some pics and user manuals over the next few weeks if you are interested please feel free to call
Abe Fleishman At Northstar for more info.

In the next few months we will also start offering a 3 pot furnace that will ONLY cost $3000 retail. That means we will also have some release sale for these units also.

**glassnewb** · 04-15-2011, 02:00 PM

I was wondering when the dipper would be available, cant wait!

**petto** · 04-15-2011, 03:45 PM

so the 3 pot will be able to hold 3 crucibles at once, say for dipping double color and clear?

**glassnewb** · 04-15-2011, 03:54 PM

yep, 3 pots 3 colors, or 2 colors and one clear. Or whatever combo you want.

**Albino Sasquatch** · 04-15-2011, 06:27 PM

how long do the coils usually last in these? like how many uses average before you have to replace? the one im wondering about is the darby dipper.

**Deez** · 04-15-2011, 08:19 PM

also was wondering about how many uses you can get out of the crucibles/color pots.

**Prekillcrum** · 04-18-2011, 10:22 AM

How long would the Darby take to get the glass fined out and up to working temp?

**Abe Fleishman** · 04-18-2011, 12:01 PM

It takes about 4-6 hours to get to get up to temp (2300). It will take about another 4-6 hours to fill then wait for 4 hours after the last fill and you can dip. So it takes about 12 hours in all give or take 2-3 hours. Some colors might take longer due to thwe color but most will work fine in this setting.
Abe

**Abe Fleishman** · 04-18-2011, 12:05 PM

The Darby Dipper.
This furnace was designed for the single man or women operation. The furnace holds 10 pounds of molten Borosilicate glass and can also hold 12 lbs of Soft glass. This furnace came to life after Darby Holm of DC Glass Works asked Northstar Glassworks to develop a small table top furnace for small gathers and a single man or women operation. After a few months of thinking about this unit we approached Paragon Industries to help design this unit for us. Northstar Glass and Paragon have teamed up to make this available to the glass market. We have tested this unit to work out the bugs for 8 months and now we feel this unit is ready for the glass market. There is also some cool things about this unit that is amazing, you can buy one with 120 volt 20 amps and 240 10 amps. The 120 volt unit is great for people that don’t have much extra power in there studio. The 240 unit is for people that want a little extra kick when the furnace charges up. We have put 2600f fire brick in these units to help with the bricks not cracking. This unit is also easy to rebuild and cost effective for replacement parts.

Once you unpack your Darby Dipper you will need to make sure you have the right amount of power needed to turn the unit on. After you plug the unit in you will need to set the controller settings. We recommend you set the furnace for a slow ramp up and down. This is the ramp for cycle for Borosilicate glass ONLY.
1. 400f in one hour
2. 800f in one hour
3. 1200f in one hour
4. 1700 in one hour
5. 2300f in one hour.
After you set the program you will need to place your crucible in the furnace make sure you center the crucible with the 6 inch hole in the lid. After you center your crucible you will then start your program to ramp to 2300f. Once the furnace reaches 2300 you can start filling the furnace with glass. All colors have different chemistry so you will need to consult your color companies to better your knowledge on which colors will work well with a furnace application. Most colors will work great but some colors will cause you problems if you do not take care while filling and melting. Northstar Glassworks believes that you need to take the upmost care while filling your furnace with glass because this glass costs a lot. We recommend you put no more than 1 and a half pound per every hour and a half, this will ensure that you are getting the best glass needed for your projects and AIR FREE. Now after you put the last of the glass you want to use for your melt in the crucible you need to wait and let the glass cook for at least 8 hours after your last time of filling the furnace. This will cook out any added air that you have forced into the glass while filling the furnace. Now that you have melted your glass it is time to pull it into whatever you want. Wait just a minute it is time to Scrape the surface of the crucible.

Scraping is the KEY to having great glass come out of your furnace. Scraping is when you take a very thin layer of glass off the top of the crucible. Think of it this way when melting Borosilicate glass the glass will develop a nasty skin on the surface of the glass and you need to get if off there so you have clean glass to work with. Northstar Glassworks has developed a tool to get this bad glass off the surface, the scraping tool has the same concave shape as your crucible so it makes scraping easy. Please look at our link to YouTube to watch what we mean. If you feel your glass is too cold at 2300f you can turn your furnace up to 2350f for a few hours to get a little more heat to work with. Some people have remelted this bad glass from the surface and had great results, make sure you inspect the quality of the scraped glass and see if you feel it is good to reuse. Now after your scrape you are ready to dip whatever you want.

**Bo Diddles** · 04-18-2011, 12:12 PM

Awesome.

**IndiePendent** · 04-18-2011, 12:28 PM

I can not wait for the three cruicble one to come out. The single pot thing is sweet but just wait for the crazy cane/tubing people are gonna be able to crank out with the triple pot!

Is the triple pot going to have refractory built all the way around the crucibles? I was talking to a furnace worker who has built a couple eletric furnaces and he maintained that its really important to have the lid open up to just the pot so that you dont accidently drip some of the gather or any trailing glass on any part of the furnace since hot glass is so corrosive.