How to Buy Glass Blowing Equipment

A fun, and yet difficult hobby or career is blowing glass. If you've taken classes, and read books to learn about this art form, you may be wondering what you need to blow glass and how to purchase your own glass blowing equipment.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

1. Decide what kind of furnace you want. There are two types of furnaces, pot furnaces and tank furnaces. Pot furnaces use pots (crucibles) for melting glass. With pot furnaces, the glass must be melted before used. Tank furnaces are extremely large (used for melting large quantities of glass) and are usually built of very expensive slabs (similar to bricks). For blowing glass to be used in art, pot furnaces are most often used.

2. Consider purchasing a glory hole. The glory hole is a place for reheating the glass. It's usually a small furnace like instrument and heats to a higher temperature than the furnace. Sometimes it's a part of a pot furnace.

3. Buy an annealer. An annealer is a special temperature controlled oven that allows heated glass to cool slowly to prevent it from breaking. Lehrs are often used. Lehrs are like conveyers that are hot on one end and cool on the other to allow the glass to cool slowly.

4. Think about purchasing a pipe warmer to help keep the blow pipes and punties warm so the glass sticks to them.

5. Acquire crack-off buckets for water to help catch the wad of glass that forms on the end of the pipes and punties.

6. Buy your glass for melting, and your powders and rods for melting and creating your pieces.

7. Get safety equipment such as gloves and eye masks to keep you safe. Glass can burn skin and if not properly handled, explode, potentially causing damage to the face and eyes.

8. Contemplate using a torch for further shaping your glass. There are many different types such as hand torches, bench burners and lathe burners. Hand torches are most often used.