Burner for Glass manipulation

[Brian Smith 1Participant @briansmith1]

I am looking into manipulating pyrex for a project and researching costs.   Burners are incredibly expensive.  I was curious if  anyone has reference on how to build one?

In addition any other tools to manipulate glass, like a glass lathe (spins glass form both sides, enabling joining of tubes etc)

 

regards

Brian

 

[Roger HartParticipant @rogerhart88496]

Don’t, glassblowing is a very frustrating art to learn. Joining tubes will cockle up at the drop of a hat.

If you must, try a book Creative Glassblowing by James Hammesfarh and Clair Stong published by Scientific American.

Book has details of air/gas venturis and air/gas burners (glassfires). Plenty of examples on the web. Be prepared for a lot of experiments and failures.

I did try making my own glassfires – propane/air – possible but tricky. A glass lathe can be made from plastic sheet with aluminium chucks, a leadscrew to bring the two together. Drive the chucks with two stepper motors at the same speed. I Tried and found my hookup too flimsy and while I was concentrating on the joint I was alarmed to find an almighty bulge in one of the silicone gas hoses. Be careful.

I made a fairly useful fires using butane pencil torches with the back chopped off and a hose fitting JB Welded in.  Probably not ‘gas safe’.

For borosilicate/pyrex you need oxygen, gas/air does not quite cut it. Assorted ways to use ex medical concentrators or the usual gas bottles.

Have fun.

[noel shelleyParticipant @noelshelley55608]

The book you need is ” gas burners for forges furnaces and kilns” It gives you all the ideas to make a burner to suit what you need. One of Steve Chastains books on making a furnace burner also gives good insight into the theory. Good Luck. Noel.

[Brian Smith 1Participant @briansmith1]

Thanks!   I have not heard of either.

 

 

Brian

[Norman BillinghamParticipant @normanbillingham91454]

As others have said, glassblowing needs a lot of practice.  You need an oxy-gas burner for borosilicate glass – open flame air-fuel burners don’t really get hot enough.

The thing that transforms glassblowing is a pair of didymium spectacles.  When glass is heated to softening temperatures it glows bright yellow because of the sodium content.  Dydimium lenses filter out the sodium D-line and let you see what is going on as well as getting higher temperatures (and less eye strain).  You can get a a pair cheaply from China but I don’t know how good they are – the ones professionals use are quite costly.  I used to have a pair which clipped on to lab safety specs.

I was taught basic glassblowing as a graduate student but it took me a couple of years of more or less daily practice to be able to do relatively simple stuff well.  We had to stop open lab glassblowing when natural gas was introduced – the higher temperature of a natural gas burner produces nitrogen oxides, and the glass workshop had to be equipped with special vent hoods.

Bear in mind also that joining glass creates a lot of stress. In a professional glass shop the day’s work would be put in an annealing oven, heated to around 400C then allowed to cool slowly overnight.  The best you can do without an annealing oven is to try to cool as slowly as you can by holding the joined job in a soft flame.

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