Bench Phase III
Third version of my workspace out on the back deck. I'm set up to work on marbles in this picture; the little "logs" (for the Drew Fritts gather technique) are heating up in the pan on the hotplate.
The pink can is glass cleaner -- an aerosol, placed far far away from the flame and the hot plate. On the right is a tall rod stand, and below it on the table surface various hand tools.
I might want to make beads, so the mandrels are ready to hand, in their tin full of beach sand (washed, of course), over to the left. The round thing on the steel marver plate is a slice of a big graphite rod that I bought -- the rod is some 14 inches long by about 4in diam, so I can slice a new marver pad off it any time I want one, and polish it to my own specification. I've also tried making kiln shelves out of it for my tiny QuickFire kiln, but that's another story.
The torch is a used Minor Burner (used when I got it, that is) which is hooked up to the natural gas line and an oxygen concentrator box (DME) which you can't see in the pic -- it's under that plywood slab with the dishtowel on it; I surrounded it with slabs of plywood in an effort to reduce the awful noise it makes. They aren't all that noisy, I just got a cheap one. Later I quieted it down by putting an insulated cardboard carton over the whole thing. The black rectangular plate that the torch is sitting on, is 1/4in aluminium, anodized black (scrap from the machine shop at work).
To the right (I'm very right-handed) the hand tools, rod stand, jar full of odd rods; and at the very edge you see 2 jars of water and the ubiquitous Plastic Test Tube Stand holding stringer and shorty leftovers of rod. Under the bench you see my old compressor, which is not doing anything useful (though it does run a tiny die grinder that can be used for polishing or grinding underwater). If I had taken this pic today, you would see a fire extinguisher also under the table, just by my right knee.
The purply work surface is a standard noncombustible worktop from Wale Apparatus; it came in a light buff colour, but I painted it with black ink to get better contrast for seeing the flame in daylight. It works beautifully; you can drop molten glass on it without any stink, melting, or fear of fire.
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