Ready to purchase. Any recommendations for or against?

[Scott Young]

Getting ready to purchase equipment for a small home setup (so I can "try new things" on my own time and not during production).

1. Jen-Ken Professional Crucible 1918: either EC's CP5396 or CP5564 depending on Peter's input?

2. Skutt GM1414 Top Loader - 41.5"W x 24.5"D x 13.5"H or Denver Glass GFA-36 front loader

3. Denver Glass 12" Glory with Giberson Burner

Other than build it myself, does anybody have any other recommendations or warnings? (I kind of suck at building things myself because I don't classify it as "fun" and I don't trust myself...)

Thanks!

[Pete VanderLaan]

The 5564 would be a better pot in its construction. Further, a smaller quantity of glass will not push the furnace quite as hard.

Any of the other equipment you mention is really not great stuff which is why I am suggesting that you use the smaller pot. You really do get what you pay for and there is a group of companies that have positioned themselves to sell stuff to people who either don't have a real need for, or the money for, top end equipment, or won't build it themselves. It will give you trouble in the long run. Melt cullet.

[Scott Young]

So, let's say I have a $8k - $10k budget for a 10-12" glory (propane) an annealer (at least 20" x 20" x 15"H) and an electric melter (with crucible). Any suggestions?

[Garner Britt]

Scott,

What do you plan to do with this stuff? Run full time or go on and off as needed.


The Skutt 1414 is a great kiln, very well built. It's a great fusing kiln and would work for short castings and pate de verre.

If you are going to use it as an annealer, pay the extra $300 or so for the lid lift assist. That big brick door is heavy. The lid lift assist makes it almost weightless.

In terms of the Jen Ken, I don't like the idea of trying to maintain 100lbs of glass in such a poorly insulated kiln. I'd go with the 75lb pot and consider wrapping some frax around the outside and top.

There's got to be somebody on the board who could build a better wire melter for that price, then again maybe the liability is too much....

The only Denver G-hole I've seen seemed fine, It was brand new and I don't know how it held up.

garner

[Glenn Randle]

Originally posted by Scott Young

(so I can "try new things" on my own time and not during production).

Thanks!


Scott,
What exactly do you mean by this? It's difficult to answer your questions without understanding your intentions & needs.



Glenn

[Jud Scott]

I have a Denver built glory hole, the large size (GH-18) with a pine ridge burner. It has been operating 4-6 days a week for the last 5 years with NO problems. They are frax glory holes, so quick heat up, but little heat retention with the doors open. The pine ridge burner makes it very quiet. All in all its been a very good glory hole for me. Hope that helps.

[Scott Young]

I plan on making marbles, paperweights, small (10 - 12" vases), small rondels, perfume bottles and cane work. I am thinking 3 days a week.

Thanks to all who have responded thus far. And yes, if anybody can and wants to build, let's discuss.

[Scott Novota]

Ok here is my current setup.

Furnace:

http://aimkilns.com/html/1411_1713.html#1713C


They don't have it listed but there is a 80 pounder. I currently use a 40 pound pot on hard IBF and a fiberboard collar. The 80 pound pot is in route. It is the same at the 1713 but I think one brick higher.

It gets hot fast, holds temp well, and rebounds well. The only big big problem I have with it is that way that the "on/off" switch works on the lid. It is a little gimpy but I can make a small modification to fix that. I did not like the handle as it kept your hand to close to the heat when opening so I fabricated a new much longer handle out of a steel wleders pick. I would also like them to build and sell a counter balance furnace stand for the lid. I am working on it myself but it would have been better if they just had it for sale. I can weld but I don't actually really love doing it.

Glory Hole:

http://www.denverglass.com/glory.html

I have the GH-12 and it works like a charm. I do miss the radiant heat from the shop furnace but it is so damn hot in there it does not really matter. I did not have the time to make this furnace myself and this was a first time shop so I did not have the needed knowledge to trust myself to make this out of the gate. I don't have the time some people do and it was simpler just to have this part shipped to me. Make sure that you are at the house when it arrives they only have one guy on the truck and the way it is shipped he can't get it on the bed gate correctly without it teetering like a suicide jumper with nothing to loose.

Only real problem is that it does not have casters with locking wheels. Then it would be perfect.


Annealer:

2 30 amp pottery kilns with a controller attached. Simply the really cheap solution.

Everything else I build myself. The bench, the marvers, the yokes, etc..etc..

I can melt cullet overnight and blow for two nights and empty the 40 pound pot easy. Turn everything off and walk away until I want to do it again.

30 pound tank of prop. gas lasts me about 6 hours. in the 12" glory and it does start to freeze up a little bit around the 4th hour. I have 2 30 pounders that I just switch out but I am going to have a double nozzle made to fix this little problem. I get them filled for about 18 bucks each and I can get 3 nights of blowing out of the 2 tanks.


All in all not the perfect studio but it is mine. I figure this is my first try and it is better than most first time tries that I have hear about. There is something to be said about having it at your fingers and blowing glass in "your shop". It is more work than it seems but I can feel the possibilities. You will find 200 things you need to change as things go forward....but at least your are moving in the right direction. Have fun.


Scott.
.

[Brian Gingras]

Originally posted by Scott Young
So, let's say I have a $8k - $10k budget for a 10-12" glory (propane) an annealer (at least 20" x 20" x 15"H) and an electric melter (with crucible). Any suggestions?

for that money you could build everything and have money left over...i built my entire studio worth of equipment for under $10,000. We have a 14" hole with side pipe warmer, 105 electic furnace, 1 big annealer at 3'x'3'30" a small bead annealer, and all the timmings. If you plan to blow 3 days per week your furnace would be on 5 days anyway, so shoot for 7 days, build a well insulated furnace, and be happy. Idle it real low on the days your not charging or blowing, and you'll be in great shape.

[Mark Wilson]

1 think the evenheat crucible furnace is better than the jen ken. here is a link to it

http://www.evenheat-kiln.com/glasskilns/crucible/crucible.htm

i have an earlier version that i have been using now for about 7 years. i have the same glory hole you want to buy and i have never had any problems with it. i have an evenheat front loader for my annealer. it is 22x22x13 inch. here is a link to it

http://www.evenheat-kiln.com/glasskilns/gt22/gt22.htm

as for the advise to build vs buy, that is a question that you and you alone must answer. do you have more time than money? are you handy? which do you want to do, blow glass or build equipment? buying the big 3, the crucible furnace, the glory hole, and the annealer made a lot of sense to me and that is what i did. i also purchased a pick up oven. i still had to build plenty of stuff myself like a bench, a pipe warmer, marver, and lots more. building eveything from scratch MAY i repeat MAY be cheaper, but it will take a long time. i know of people who started to build their studio around the same time i did, and they are still working on it and i have been blowing in my small studio now for 7 years.

if you are planning to shut down often, i would recommend that you stay with a 30 to 40 pound crucible. that is about the amount of glass that you can use up in a weekend, and you could hot charge your furnace during the weekend to get even more blow time. i also think that you should stay with cullet or pellets and not try batch unless you want to change elements often. i melt cullet and i get about 9 months out of mine blowing only on the weekends. then some day, in the future, when you want to get a larger crucible furnace using moly or SiC, you can still use your smaller crucible furnace as a color pot, so it will not be a wasted investment.

[Jordan Kube]

If you get the G-hole switch the Giberson burner for a Spiral arts one. Very quiet.

[Scott Novota]

When you work 50+ hours a week in a non-glass blowing job sometimes building everything with your own hands is not the smartest use of time. I don't work as a glass blower so I don't have the access to the resources that you guys might.

I have very little interest in the infrastructor. I want to blow glass. I know I could build it but I have a day job pays me more than I personally could ever make in 3 life times as a glassblower of my skill level and my time is worth more to me surfing, blowing glass, or working than making an annealer/glory/furnace.

Sometimes you just have to figure out what is more important to you. For me buying the equipment at the prices I paid worked. I built what I figured was worth my time to build and purchased the rest.

Does that make me less of a glass blower? Shrug maybe to some but that is ok with me. I have a shop that is up and running and I am blowing glass. That was my goal.


Scott.
.

[Pete VanderLaan]

That makes total sense Scott with the exception that when you build it, you have a very good idea of how to maintain and repair it, and it is a high maintenance trade.

[Richard Huntrods]

It also makes total sense to me Scott.

However, in the case of furnaces, with the exception of Steve's moly melters, it would seem you DON'T get what you pay for.

Ever single commercial wire-melting furnace picture I've seen on this thread looks pitifully under-insulated.

They all look like pottery kilns with new controllers. They just aren't built for holding 2000F+ temps.

My annealer is a used kiln. Uses 20 amps @220V to hold 920F.

My furnace is homebuilt with lots of insulation. Uses 4.5 amps @220V to hold a full pot (40lbs) at 1850.

You can put your hand on the outside of the funace when it's at 2000F (and hold it there). If you touch the outside of the annealer when it's at 920F, you will get a second degree burn instantly. (first hand experience talking here... :o )

All the power to my annealer is really just heating the room.

It's too bad no-one wants to build a really efficient wire melter, but that seems to be the way it is.

-Richard

[Scott Novota]

Agreed that knowledge is needed.


I needed a fix that worked for me. This was it. In the future with more money and more time I would do it different but this gets me in the game. Someplace I would not be without doing it this way.


Sometimes you can't be everything.

Scott.
.

[Pete VanderLaan]

Originally posted by Richard Huntrods

room.

It's too bad no-one wants to build a really efficient wire melter, but that seems to be the way it is.

-Richard

*********************

Probably more like no one wants to pay for it. I took note when I was making color that the sales held by Olympic etc never included Kugler, the cheap company on the block. It was always Zimmermann or something else that really had character as opposed to being plain vanilla. Kugler was vastly cheaper and that was what sold.

except of course my black... but I would bet a hat Kugler Black outsold mine twenty to one.

[Richard Huntrods]

Originally posted by Pete VanderLaan
*********************

Probably more like no one wants to pay for it. I took note when I was making color that the sales held by Olympic etc never included Kugler, the cheap company on the block. It was always Zimmermann or something else that really had character as opposed to being plain vanilla. Kugler was vastly cheaper and that was what sold.

except of course my black... but I would bet a hat Kugler Black outsold mine twenty to one.

Yea - build... buy - two sides of the same economic equation.

The cost of building a properly insulated wire melter probably isn't justified by projected sales, especially when compared to the economics of making the same item and selling it in 3-4+ flavors (casting kiln, pottery kiln, annealer, furnace, ...) That's what I suspect is the real economy behind what's available.

The stock pottery kiln design is pretty good for all but the furnace application, and it can be "stretched" to fit. Sort-of.

-R

[Tom Fuhrman]

After building my own equipment for over the last 20 years, I recently bought one of the small 60 lb. wire melters like Scott. It's working great and will pay for itself in the first 3 monthsn of use. With propane at nearly $3.00/gal. it's just prohibitive to continue using it when electric is available. Rather than spend the big bucks for a moly or SIC furnace that is no doubt a better piece of equipmment, I can trash this one after a year and still be way ahead. After you're in your 60's you look at the longevity of things a little differently and wonder if you'll work long enough and hard enough to pay for the equipment savings. At the price I paid for the wire melter I could not afford to make it myself. After I would figure the time to run down, gather the materials, have them shipped, (we're 70 mi. from any major city), it was better to buy and modify it to make it what I wanted it to be. If I figure my labor at $35/hr, I would have had to do all the shopping/ purchasing of parts and assemble them and listen to myself bitch and moan about cutting my finger and/or dragging the welder out of the stack of stuff that piled on it in the corner,etc. in 3 days or less to cover the cost of the new wire melter. The older you get, the more you learn to take the path of least resistance to get to the finish line. This time it was easier to " have someone else put the fence up to keep the herd from wandering". Everyone's situation is different, pick what works for you.

Tenn. Tom

[Scott Novota]

Love talks like these I get more out of different points of view in 2 days than years of mistakes.



Scott.
.

[Wes Hunting]

I would have to take Scott and Toms side on this one. I've always built all my own equipment, until now. This time around I chose to buy a Stadlerocker after using one in NY for a couple times. It's the only one I would buy.
I would much rather put my energy into my glasswork than building equipment at this point in my life.
Life is short.
I do agree with Pete that one should have a good understanding of building equipment. I feel part of the art form is knowing how glass melts, but there is an issue of having to much control can rob peter to pay paul ( no pun intended )
I have built, I would guess, 30 gas furnaces in my time, all of which served myself and others well but there is no way in hell I would take the time to learn to build an electric one, the correct way.
A big problem for me has been trying to find the time to develop new work. Galleries will lock you in to a good selling style giving you very little slack to develope new ideas. Going the store bought route will give me some of that time.
Hell, I even started hiring someone to mow my lawn this year.

[Scott Novota]

Wes those shields are solid 1 on bottom and hollow 3/4 for the rest?

Do you mind me asking what the base width and length are? I need to make one like this over the weekend.


Scott.
.

[Wes Hunting]

shields? Jorden is the shield guy, and they are very nice.
We use small dogs duct taped to our forearms. They start yapping when the heat goes into the danger zone.
Other times we just hold a Republican at gun point to stand between myself and the extreme heat.

[Glenn Randle]

[

It's too bad no-one wants to build a really efficient wire melter, but that seems to be the way it is.

-Richard [/B]



I don't see why you couldn't just add an extra few inches of blanket & cover that with a roofing metal skin. A roll of frax is $50 and about the same for the metal, add an hour of labor and you're done. Probably not the "best" that could be desinged, but it would be a cheap & quick fix that anyone that can tie their own shoes could do.

Seems like a "2 Beer" job to me.;)

[Jordan Kube]

You are correct Scott.

[Rob Dworkin]

Scott Young, get the electric crucible kiln but expect it to self destruct. I got an Aim and it did not take long for it to break down in every way possible. Building one is not easy the first time you do it but its worth it. You aren't going to have much of a choice because your store bought "furnace" is going to break and after the second cheap mechanical relays goes you are going to want to upgrade the insides of it.

I used the Aim as a working model and changed it as I went. worked for me but it was expensive, frustrating and took a long time.

[Richard Huntrods]

My opinion:

Buy the Mark Lauckner video.

Build the Mark Lauckner furnace.

Yes, it's more up-front work, but as the oil filter commercial says:

"You can pay now, or you can pay later".

You certainly will not regret building/having a Lauckner furnace.

The energy savings alone will pay for your time and investment.

-R

[Mark Wilson]

Originally posted by Rob Dworkin
[B] get the electric crucible kiln but expect it to self destruct. /B]

i have been using my evenheat crucible kiln now for going on 7 years. i replace the relay, TC, and the elements once a year during the summer when i blow glass outside. i have not had the same problems that you seem to have, so i do not think that you can make a general statement like that.

[Rob Dworkin]

Mark take it easy, maybe your evenheat kiln is durable but the Aim is not. I expected it to keep itself together melting cullet and being on for a couple weeks at a time. It didn't.

[Pete VanderLaan]

It looked to me to be a reworked ceramic bisque kiln with controller, nothing more. Am I missing something?

[Mark Wilson]

Originally posted by Pete VanderLaan
It looked to me to be a reworked ceramic bisque kiln with controller, nothing more. Am I missing something?

no you are not missing anything. it is very similar to normal kilns. it is slightly different in that it

has thicker walls (4.5 vs 2.5 to 3 inches)

uses 12 gauge kanthal APM wire

has a type S thermocouple

uses a mercury wetted relay

has slots for an upper baffle to seal around the crucible

has a removable bottom in case of spills

here is a link

http://www.evenheat-kiln.com/glasskilns/crucible/crucible.htm

the price with a multistep digital controller is around $2000. it will only fit a 40 pound crucible so it is little use to professional glassblowers but it is great for weekend use.

[Pete VanderLaan]

I was referring to the AIM Kiln.

[Rob Dworkin]

Pete I don't think you are missing anything. Will work for a little while but not the best idea.

[Pete VanderLaan]

well, if that's true, then wrapping it in fiber will require pulling the stainless skin off of the outside since it will burn up otherwise and then it starts to look like the Michelin man cross bred with Ahab strapped to the whale in Moby Dick. Then, since the bricks inside are not 2600's, but 2300's, it will fail in fairly short order.