Post #4862667 · Elektrine

2026-09-12 18:42 UTC

Things are heating up for my dreams of a color furnace! My color base batch (raw glass batch without the usual decolorants) arrived and we found a time that Mike could stop by and offer his sage color melting wisdom while I have both of the workstations rented for the weekend. The furnace is getting dialed in and this will be the first time it is getting used! I mixed the color base really well and we split it in half for two melts. I added black nickel oxide, sulfur, pine rosin, Barium Nitrate and red iron oxide to *hopefully turn my color base into a dark amber Sunday my tube puller in Philly, (and myself) have to work- but Monday we will pull tubes out of the color furnace! Soon I will get all the glass out of the existing crucible, flush it with compatible glass, then take that out and begin charging the brown batch! So exciting! #neon #light #residency #art #sculpture #color #brown #glass #NYC #Brooklyn #science #craft #chemistry #DIY #Urbanglass #notes #sketchbook #dreams

Replies (1)

@JamesAkers@expressional.social 2026-09-14 02:26

This #residency has reminded me how much I love emptying furnaces. To remove every last bit of glass out of a #furnace pot, we make these glass mops, pushing the glass around on the floor and quenching it into buckets of water to get more. The mop gets bigger an bigger until you can't lift it without bending the rod its on, or you cannot fit it into the furnace door. Then you start another mop. The water buckets meanwhile furiously boil as they get filled with mops of once molten glass. In its first melt, the furnace isn't fully tuned, so my charge schedule was cold and fast. We wanted 2300F but the furnace could only muster 1970F. This makes the glass take longer between charges. I was adding 7.5 pound brown paper bags full of batch at about an hour interval between charges. While the glass didn't fully melt between charges like it is supposed to, even partially melted it was a gorgeous brown. Sean is arriving now- hopefully tomorrow we have a full pot of #glass #residency #nyc

Open ##4862666