How to Build Your Own Electric Glass Furnace
My name is Anthony Parker and I am here to relate my experience in building glass furnaces in Portland, Oregon for the last 40 years.
When I began working in glass at Portland State University in 1971 the studio furnace was a Toledo style Dominic Labino box furnace. 1/3 of the bottom of the box contains the glass and 2/3 the remaining is the firing chamber above. The burner entered from the top centered. This box was easily laid up from leftover pavers from bottle factories. In 1971 the only glass factory in Portland was a bottle factory. Portland now has 2 flat glass color factories and 3 borosilicate color factories, and of course the original bottle factory.
Any ceramic student can look at the box glass furnace and see the immediate efficiency advantage of arching the roof, side firing across the door and adding a flue. Every rebuild was a new adventure and a development of better glass through melting correctly. The next development was making the furnace round with a dome rather than an arch. More work to build but much more efficient. "How to Build..." continued next page >
The development of this electric glass furnace would have never happened without my conversations with these professionals: Gary Scrutton, Parabelle Glass (retired). Gary says, “You’ll never know until you build it.” Ray Ahlgren, FireArt Glass, says, “I got it right the first time, but I didn’t learn anything.” Which is another way of what Thomas Edison said, “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." Kenney Simpson, Aeschylus Enterprises, says, “Never build anything that will negate your fire insurance!”