9 new members of the family

These are the nine I made yesterday. Next is the polishing of the bottoms.

Made 9 paperweights today

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Made Glass Today!

The long awaited day has arrived. I made 4 paperweights today in the shop. I'm fortunate to have my own shop running again.

Furnace is running!

Today I installed the new controller and started the furnace. It will be up to around 1800 degrees over a period of 18 hours. It was -14 degrees in Chicago this morning. Im not kidding..................I wanna move! So far the choices are : Seattle, Chapel Hill, Durham NC, or Jacksonville Fla.

Today in the shop I added dabs of mortar to the element shelves. This will keep the elements from creeping of the shelf as they soften from the heat. I also added a 40watt light bulb and socket to the inside of the electrical cabinet. This will add some radiant heat to, hopefully, keep the temperature near the digital controller above the minimum 15 degrees to operate. Im projecting that within 2 weeks I will make the first batch of glass.............God willing.

fired up the annealer

I was in the shop today and figured out how to program the controller for the annealer and also brought the annealer up to 950 degrees F. This is a small but important victory. Reminds me of a saying I heard "how do you eat an elephant.......one small bite at a time".

This is the control panel for the annealing oven. I finished it today. I am heading back to the shop to weld the yoke stand together.