The garage is slowly getting transformed to make room for the lampworking studio. We spent quite a bit of time this weekend clearing out junk, enough to fill the back of the truck for a trip to Goodwill.
Another trip to Urban Ore, this time with the garage entry door dimensions in hand, yielded a nice, full glass door to replace the existing solid entry door to the garage from the yard.
The idea is to let more natural light into the garage as there are no windows except the small ones in the roll up door. I will probably open the roll up door when the weather is nice, but when it's rainy or windy that won't be an option.
Our contractor friend was able to come over and put in a gate to access the sideyard next to the garage so we can store the garden care stuff out there. We also got this little Suncast storage shed to protect the lawnmower, etc from the weather.
This is what we hope it will look like after we struggle through the 12 page assembly manual.
In addition to setting up the work area, I have also started getting tools and supplies for the actual glassworking. I got a good deal on a slightly used kiln on eBay. There are slight scorch marks on the outside, but the ceramic brick inside is still pristine white.
This kiln, a
Paragon SC-2, is perfect for the beginner, it has a small door for putting beads inside and also a large door for putting in sculptural pieces. Best of all it has a programmable controller that allows the user to program up to 4 recipes for annealing (heating up, holding and cooling down gradually for set rates and times). The different recipes will be good to set up for small, large and colored pieces (some "striking" glass actually turns different colors or shades depending on how hot it stays and for how long).
Arrow Springs is an excellent lampworking supply company up in Shingle Springs. I took a class there last weekend and met the owners, Craig and Donna, who are good people. Craig spent a long time with me discussing the pros and cons of various brands of torches and how well they work with oxygen concentrators. Based partly his advice and the other reviews I have read, I bit the bullet and placed an order for a GTT Lynx torch and 15 SLPM Oxygen concentrator.
The class last weekend was taught by an incredibly talented, smart and funny artist from Germany,
Anastasia. The class was targeted to people who already had some experience with lampworking, so I was totally out of my depth, but everyone was really nice and no-one gave me any grief for being such a newbie beginner. Anastasia showed us how to make nature scenes, trees and such using hair thin stringers of black glass to "draw" on the surface of the bead and how to use enamel powder to add subtle colors. The beads below are my inexpert and somewhat rushed attempts to keep up with the instructions.
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| drawing lines over 2 colors |
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| more practice drawing lines |
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| bush with leaves and berries |
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| another bush with leaves and blue flowers |
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| bush with enamel colors |
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| multi-color stringers for branches, colored with enamel |
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| getting "handy" with heat control |
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| a little bit of coral |
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| fishy, fishy |
I learned a tremendous amount and cannot wait to try some of these techniques again when I can really focus and take my time.
