Post by @JamesAkers@expressional.social

2026-09-14 02:26 UTC

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

Replies (1)

@JamesAkers@expressional.social 2026-09-15 01:28

Wowza! The nickel, sulfur #brown color pot was amazing! I believe Mike nailed the density I was looking for even with just one dip of #glass sandwiched between two clear dips of glass, its dense enough where the tube looks black without a phosphor backing or light shining through it. The personal dark color pot is also amazing for recycling- I could throw my bits of color in the crack off bin (shedding off the cooling blowpipes) back in the furnace before dinner to have fully melted, streaky swirly glass after dinner! I saved most of the dense brown glass cleaning out the pot at the end of the night as color bars- the typical way we buy it I have another 50 pounds of #color base- and well over a hundred, 5 foot tubes. The lighter tan color tubes have silver in them. Mike mentioned silver nitrate may be needed for those. I wonder how much I would need for 50 pounds and if it would be safe to melt? I pulled a flawless 50 footer today! #residency #neon #tube #Brooklyn #art #sculpture

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