PWV96 Non-Lithium Batch from Spruce Pine

[Pete VanderLaan]

Spruce Pine and Guadalupe Glass have reached an agreement on the PWV96 batch with no lithium. It will cost $1.09 lb with Erbium and $1.05 plain.
I was asked to formulate this glass some time back and asked John Croucher and Mark Peiser to be my peer group observers. It took several months melting rather frequently. At the End, John Said "I cannot find anything wrong with this glass." That was as high a praise as I was going to ever get.

The glass is a dead on 96. Anything Spruce Pie fits, it will fit. It is not possible to have a glass fit everything on the market. The range is too wide. It easily adapts to any cane libraries that used Spruce Pie 87. I find it to be rather easy on the refractories and I tend to melt it at 2250F and then finish it out at 2325-2350F. It can be melted colder, just more slowly.


So far, there has not been a single response to the glass that was not extremely positive. It will become the glass batch used at Penland. The west Coast tests will occur at the Museum in Tacoma and at Pratt once the batch has been received at Olympic. I have used this for six years now. It melts as easily as SP87. It is brilliant, high luster, easy polish great viscosity curve and does not devitrify in casting. It does not cord up easily.

Probably makes childbirth a pleasure .

[James Burts]

That's great news Pete!! Congratulations!!

[Michael Ahlefeldt-Laurvig]

Yup great!

[Pete VanderLaan]

To the best of my knowledge, Tonnage production will begin this week at $1.09 lb and that price should hold for a while. It should be available at Olympic, Spruce Pine and I think High Temp in Portland with a slight add on price. Individual shipments will also be available for those needing smaller quantities like a single pallet. Jim Myer at East Bay is going to handle it. There is one other who I'm not really familiar with on the west coast down south . That stuff is all Greg's department.

I have an opal white formula to goes with it but I'm not sure how to deal with it at all. It fit really well. It's harder on the refractories though. It is a fluorine. It would really require decent ventilation but it's indeed a dense white opal.

[Victor Chiarizia]

i have some to melt as a test. in 2 weeks i'll melt on top of sp w/erbium and see how it works. i'll report back. v

[Eben Horton]

Congrats Mr Vanderlaan! I’m happy that an agreement has been struck

[Pete VanderLaan]

Originally Posted by Victor Chiarizia

i have some to melt as a test. in 2 weeks i'll melt on top of sp w/erbium and see how it works. i'll report back. v

*****
I don't like the idea of simply melting on top of glass already in the pot but in actuality it will probably work alright since the thermal signatures are so similar. I Thought you did that once before testing it six years back. In all the people who are testing it in an existing crucible, I'm not aware of anyone who had actual cording issues doing that.

I wasn't aware that you were doing any of the testing. I know Kenny, Pablo and Penland did. Up here, Josh B and Nathan MacComber. I view your doing it as good although the testing is somewhat time sensitive. Two weeks is out there.

[Pete VanderLaan]

Originally Posted by Eben Horton

Congrats Mr Vanderlaan! I’m happy that an agreement has been struck

****
Struck? More like beaten into submission.

[Eben Horton]

Hahahaha……..

[Brian Bradshaw]

I'm curious if anyone experimenting has got a melting curve for wire small batches. Also, how close the viscosity curve matches the heavy lead bar. (kugler, et. al.) I don't like being limited on how thin I can blow with blobs of bar color using any of the available cullet. Anyway, congrats, Pete, I find it sad that so few of the newbies don't batch. Just my 2c...

[Pete VanderLaan]

Richard Huntrods has been melting batch in a wire kiln for years with great success. I doubt there will be data comparing the glass behaviours. The only time I have seen both melted side by side was the Penland evaluation last week but I don't believe it got into tight measuring.

You are right in my opinion about how few young people are embracing this part of the craft. I know of two, one in Vermont, one at Alfred. Boro seems to be the future.

I was going through a lot of correspondence with John Croucher last week. The letters stopped two months before he died. He was always so open and is so much missed. Our history will show how underappreciated he was in this time frame. One of the real greats.

[Richard Huntrods]

I melted it in my 40lb wire melter using the same schedule as SP batch.

The only thing I changed using it was it wanted to blow at 2150 instead of 2100 on my furnace. SP liked 2100 for blowing.

Otherwise same annealing, same charging, same glass except better in every way, especially on the finishing side.

-R

[Josh Bernbaum]

Great to hear, Pete. So if SP will still continue with the original 87 but at a higher price point, will they be cleaning out the mixer between batch types? Just asking cause I've heard you groan before about Tom not cleaning the mixer unless asked.

[Pete VanderLaan]

I don't know what the future holds for SP87 at this point beyond knowing a major price increase is coming at you, I would expect that there will be a lot of hoarding prior to the increase so I expect our sales of the PWV to be slow initially. I would not be surprised to see a backlog on orders for it but that aspect has nothing to do with me.

Greg is installing a new mixer this week but that needs some support infrastructure. It's twice the size of the old mixer to the best of my understanding. It's much larger. I don't know if they cleaned the mixer between glass types or not. In this case, it would not be critical to do so since I designed the PWV96 to have a thermal signature to be extremely close to the SP87. Just no lithium or a bunch of other cheap shit ingredients. This glass will color way better I suspect. The materials I used are not particularly inflationary although I believe Short Mt just had an increase.

[David Hopman]

Is there any chance of letting Jim at EBB mix it there? I'd be willing to send your commission payment directly to you.

[Pete VanderLaan]

Jim Myer at East Bay called me and told me yesterday he is ordering 6 pallets of it to go with some SP87 in a container already ordered . All sales will be handled by Spruce Pine Batch and its distributors. Jim is one of the dealers who will have it in stock but right now? It's a mixing frenzy in search of the new mixer. Olympic is handling it and we just haven't talked with High Temp in Portland yet, maybe Greg has. It goes for Beta Testing at the museum and at Pratt sometime in the next week. Greg will be back in North Carolina tomorrow. My role will switch from formulation to any troubles anyone might have.

Anyone who has tried it, loves it. You can't beat the price and quality . It's easy on the refractories as well and melts as well if not better than SP87.

[David Hopman]

What is the boron content?

[Hugh Jenkins]

Pete, from your tests do you expect the higher gathering temp? You can't send melting schedules across the street because of thermocouple placement, charging method etc. The same can be said to some extent with reported gathering temp. In my situation, a 50 degree difference in holding temp would be a killer or at least a change in the furnace management.

[Pete VanderLaan]

Originally Posted by David Hopman

What is the boron content?

********
zero

[Pete VanderLaan]

Originally Posted by Hugh Jenkins

Pete, from your tests do you expect the higher gathering temp? You can't send melting schedules across the street because of thermocouple placement, charging method etc. The same can be said to some extent with reported gathering temp. In my situation, a 50 degree difference in holding temp would be a killer or at least a change in the furnace management.

****
In my usage, I like the working temperature to be about 20F higher if I want to imitate the viscosity of SP87. I don't find it needs higher temps for melting at all, but likely a bit more time.

In Nathan's tests he does this horror story melting throwing four bags in at 2050F and then lets it sit until the next day and turns it up to 2200f and does another four bags. Then he went to 2325 until satisfied- I think about five hours. I would not do it that way, but Greg and I were both interested is seeing what would happen. We wanted stuff like that. It was just fine. It does have frogs eggs some on the surface and they are easily dispatched.

While I don't see an issue with melting specific colors, I do think that the viscosity of whatever you're doing matters the most tied to atmosphere, but not heat per se. I do not have any difficulty melting Cad Sel reds, or silver doped and copper doped glasses to match this at all. My fluorine white is certainly melted a lot colder or the pot would vanish. At the same time, I have to say I can't be all things to all people. So far I don't have public enemies over the goop.
My greatest concern doing this was an attack on the refractories but in actuality Lithium is far worse than what I'm doing. The original Labino formula had more lithium in it than it does currently but it ate the liners alive. I decided to see how long I could actually leave a pot in doing this my way and it was over two years. I do not recommend doing that at all. i continue to think 90 melts is the absolute outside but it showed little wear. I confess it wasn't charged all that frequently but there were never wear lines on the walls.

[David Hopman]

I'll say that the high lithium formula that I have been using didn't affect my liner much at all, but the one load of batch with boron ate the crap out of it and left a noticeable line in the pot. A later round with nuggets ate a channel through the liner, through the insulation and all the way to the outer board.

So no boron is great news.

[Pete VanderLaan]

there are some batches when put in a pot back to back cause what I could only call a catalytic reaction. It has been a long time since I've seen that but it is in the last ten years and crucibles literally looked like they had overnight been ripped to shreds. I honestly don't remember what the batches, or cullets were but it was ugly.

I don't want boron in the glass because it is hard on recuperators, hard on the doghouse door and doesn't really add positive characters to the glass in terms of luster . It makes glasses melt at a lower temp without changing expansions much. That is not enough for me. No borax.

[Pete VanderLaan]

Originally Posted by David Hopman

What is the boron content?

"Spectrum Nuggets, Corrosive or not." is a thread in Antiques and Classics which really drills down on the corrosive effects of Boron and the damage it will do to any kind of furnace. It dates back a full ten years. I would encourage anyone to read it. I would encourage anyone willing to try to determine whether their commercial cullets uses it. My batch does not, not does SP87.

[Pete VanderLaan]

This was copied from over at the Oceanside thread:

Unless Oceanside has changed the formulation for this particular goop, it's a 94.1 and was designed for slumping not blowing. It was designed to stay entirely within its own family of glasses but not to be used with other glasses.

In some instances, incompatibility will show itself very quickly but in actuality it often takes weeks or more to check. Given that reality, testing will give you an immediate result to consider. The best test I know of to determine a mismatch is to sell the piece to someone else. That almost always breaks them.

Otherwise, a Hagy seal or a ring test are very reliable indicators of mismatch. I am of the opinion that everyone should be capable of performing one of these tests. They are well outlined in GlassnotesIV .

I will also be devoting some time to them in the book I am at work on now. Given that my clear batch PWV96 will be the mainline batch in the future, I now plan to take my entire body of colors along with recalculations of the colorwork in The Thuringen recipes and to convert and test them all as compatible with that clear. It occurred to me today that PWV96 will be the only glass available that is entirely made in America, something worth considering.

Greg will also be receiving a formula for a neutral clear base that is suitable for making copper reds and silver Calcedonia. There will be a recipe for opal white. It will have color formulas for other such stuff like golds and Cad sel reds although they will come with an ample dose of caution when considering the environment. It will take about 18 months to process the material into print.
__________________

[Kevin McLeod]

Pete, I know you said Spruce Pine isn't interested in building out to melt cullet, but do you have a feeling for how this glass would handle being re-melted if someone did set up to melt it for cullet? Would the formula have to be adjusted to ensure it retained quality, or would it behave well as-is?