Professional Practice 2 (6)

The hot shop is properly operational at last! 

I came in early this morning to assist Mia with blowing. The furnace is hot and full of lovely treacly glass so we gave it a proper work out. 

Mia has had new pipes made and they work really well and she has got some beautiful new jacks from Moore in Seattle. It was only as we were going along though, that we could really gauge what little things were still missing from the new hot shop and now have a fresh wish list that includes, among many other things, some smaller blocks and a pipe warmer! 

Despite this we were going along quite well until we tried to make cane. It was then that our lack of a pipe cooler became evident as Mia grasped the pipe in the wrong place and burnt her hand! This was just at the moment that we had joined the clear and coloured glass together and were just about to start pulling. We still ended up pulling - just not in anything like the direction we were supposed to, the result of which is that Mia now has some very thick and strangely shaped turquoise glass that looks nothing like cane. This unfortunately brought our morning of blowing to a close, but the good news is that after half an hour of keeping her hand in iced water it looks like she has not burnt it badly and should get away with it. During the break next week Mia, Lisa and I are all hoping to get in to the hot shop for a full day to really get into the swing of blowing again and hopefully Mia will have got Eric to make a pipe cooler by then!

Mia Heating up the bubble in the glory hole

Going for a reheat after it has been blown

Professional Practice 2 (5)

Great Excitement this week! The Furnace is full of hot glowing glass and Mia has started blowing! There is still lots of fine tuning to do - she needs some new pipes that aren't quite so bashed and bent and she needs some bigger blocks, but basically it all works. Well - I say it all works, we had a slight technical hitch this morning as between the three of us, we could NOT work out why the glory hole wouldn't light - it was working yesterday, but today wouldn't have it at all - until Eric finally arrived and noticed that a very discrete "RESET" button had popped out!

Lisa was very upset that it took a man to come and fix it for us (which he did in about 20 seconds!). By this time it was a bit too late to really get into some blowing, so next week we are going in extra early so that I can properly assist Mia.

The rest of the morning we spent trying to join Lisa up with Ausglass (but the website wouldn't work) and we started thinking about how to market more to architectural firms for more business. We have also decided to get the sandblasting cabinet I looked at this week - then no doubt it will be quite another challenge to connect it all up to the air compressor. The next thing I will have to do is find out what media we should get to sandblast glass and where to get it from.

No photo's this week as for some reason my computer refuses to read the files from my phone (yet another technical challenge to be overcome!).

BUT - I do have photo's of my first glass block to come out of the kiln at QCA.

This is my first map block - 5 layers of 4mm Bullseye tekta glass with a high-fire enamel printed map.

The kin worked well, but I did have a couple of complications. 

I couldn't be there for top temp and there is a slight de-vit along one edge (ideally I would be there to manually drop the temp more quickly), and I had to leave it on a 24 hour soak at annealing temp as the controller only has 3 stages and I had to fit in a visit back to re-program it - tricky with my already tight lecture schedule.

Still I'm pleased with the result - just got to work out how to cold work it now!

Professional Practice 2 (4)

This week at Glass Xpressions Mia and Eric have been making progress with the setting up of the new Hot Shop. The furnace is ready to go and today they brought in an extra annealing kiln. The kiln is halfway through being refurbished - it has had a new lining installed and now needs all the electrics to be fixed. It's a good size kiln that has been purchased from a local potter and because it doesn't have the elements in at the moment, Mia can specify them to be just where she wants them. Most of the mornings entertainment was watching Lisa and Eric compete with each other as to who was the best forklift driver! (I personally think it was a tie in the end).

                                              Eric and Mia

We also did research on sorting out a sandblaster and I'm going to look at a cabinet next monday - just a small benchtop one, but hopefully good enough for our needs.

The rest of the morning I spent with Lisa going through her stock of glass pulling together a collection of pieces that I might be able to use for my first stained glass piece. I've chosen some blues, greens and yellows that I want to print on and paint with ceramic enamels. I've brought them home and cleaned them up and now a design is taking shape.

Lastly, here's a photo of the lovely Lexie - my favourite glass studio dog  (she is such a personality - I love her!)