STARworks & East Montgomery High's First Glassblowing Class in action. My students are working on there hardest assignments yet the dreaded 6" cylinder!!!

Here it is! One of the neatest things we have done yet, our batch pre-heater/ heat exchanger. You can see in the photo an elbow comes directly off of the flue. It then attaches to a T that we made with two butterfly valves inside. With those in place we can direct heat to either the batch box, heat exchanger, or both at the same time!! Craziness! The largest diameter horizontal cylinder is the heat exchanger. It has two pipes coming in and out of it that circulate glycol. To and from a heat storage tank down in the bio-diesel area.

Well, the annual "gathering" is over. It was a blast. My students from East Montgomery High helped out with a killer glassblowing demo. We made a Giant Central Park NC Leaf! The students had a blast and really showed that they are becoming more and more comfortable with the material.
Right now we are very actively trying to get a heat exchanger and batch pre-heater fabricated and put up in the studio. What it is going to do is take the waste heat from off the furnace. Divert some of it down to an insulated box for pre-heating batch before charging. The rest of the heat will pass through the heat exchanger and through an air to liquid exchange the heat energy will end up stored in bio-fuels. The heat that is stored will be used as process heat needed to convert used vegetable oil into bio-diesel! Pretty cool right.

Hey there everyone. It's been a while since I've blogged, sorry about that. There has been a lot that has happened since the last post. These two here came in for a week. Our biggest rental yet, they worked five, eight hour day's and one five hour day. It was a whole lot of work, and what where they making you may ask. Chickens!! Jon had a commission from K.F.C. to make over 800 chicken ornaments for K.F.C. to give away as gifts. We didn't get all of them made in that week but we got a big chunk taken care of.

Also other exciting news..... Starworks Glass Lab has our very own high school glassblowing class!! We have been able to work with East Montgomery high school to provide a class during their regular school day. So far the class is ten students and we meet twice a week for two hours each time. We have been able to cover glass fusing as well as glass blowing. Right now the students are in there first week of making cylinders a crucial step in learn how to blow glass.

Soon I will post some pictures of the class in action.

This past weekend we held our second fusing class, here is a photo of some of the work that was made. The class was really fun everyone who took it had a blast. Other than that studio has been pretty busy we are working on making cups for the "Annual Meeting". We are also working on new work for a show that we have coming up here pretty soon. And we have the week booked solid with renters making chicken ornaments.

Man, I just can't say it enough, I love to cut things with an angle grinder.  Even if it is through solid as a rock, ultra strong, corrosion resistant cast-able with a really old crappy blade. Well I guess I wasn't exactly thrilled, but it wasn't too bad. 

We are still working on the furnace, a new door and cap got cast last night.  So after just a couple more things get changed we will be ready to stuff the top with fiber and MICROTHERM!!!

We are going to save that for a weekend evening.

So yesterday Adam and I took the cap off of the furnace.  Which was kind of funny because it looked quite daunting, we had even freed up a whole two hours of our afternoon to take it out.  We originally thought that we were going to break it up by drilling a bunch of holes and then break off small sections to pull out really easily.  Yeah I ended up hitting it with a chisel and a hammer it took 15 min.  We thought it was awesome. Our lives are average. REMINDER fusing class next Saturday, sign up now!!!

Fusing Classes

Just an announcement, August 22-23 we will be offering a fusing class here at STARworks glass. I am working on the structure for the class now. It is going be a nice addition to the line up of classes here at the glass studio. Also for August the Hot Shop is going to be turned off so that we can make some repairs on our furnace. Other than that, we are just working on the studio as well as getting some of our own work done. Also, Takuro is building a new Kiln at his home and we are going to be making a mold for a cast door arch that should be pretty fun.
Keep an eye on our website for up coming workshop and open house dates.

Hey Nick here, 

This is my first blog ever and i guess i just want to say the the hot shop is doing well.  StevO and I have been having a blast making some new work, and Megan a new Wet Dog employee has been working in it as well. We are also offering some new class this summer check out the website or stop in and check it out.  There is a new weekend 3 hr workshop that is quickly becoming popular, it is offered ever second saturday and we are hoping to increase that as well.  Any way back to work.