I have one roasty toasty left arm. I was stood a touch too long trying to get glass out of the crucible in the bottomr of the furnace and well, when my arm had gotten a touch hotter than simply warn, burns up n down lol. 1200 is a lot of degrees of hotness. Great fun though, made a fancy wine glass, brandy decanter, a fucked up vase, some christmas bouballs. I tell you, making a bong by hand from glass is absolute childs play. Takes a touch of work to keeping yoru main stem straight when you open it up, but other than that, first ever go with some melted glass and i'd have been able to knock one out if i had time. Also makes me wonder how in heck spoons/pipes are so difficult to make, you literally form your ball of glass and blow, cut it down, blow, re-heat, cut down, blow, childs play. Granted this is not lampwork, but the principals remain the same (hence how i was able to carry them over to what i was doing today)
I have easily recouperated the initial cost with what i made. I mean just the christmas bouballs they sell themselves for £15 a pop. Their type of glass used is very famous, no buyin in, it's all made from scratch from sand with a geneation old recipe for colour, very cool place. Although the stuff is loaded with iron oxide i think it is so their glass is really heavy.
