I was a professional glass blower for 15 years. Glass is incredibly complicated. Getting quality glass from raw batch is a real craft. Thanks for the video and thanks for the tenacity!
The Romans used coal, that they turned into coke! Not the king u put up your nose, put into a furnace and blow air over it and it reaches hightemps fast!
The taller your chimney is, the stronger the pressure diference it creates when you heat it up. So if you think you need more airflow to make your wood burn more cleanly, make the chimney taller. Hope this helps. Good luck!
Forcing air flow catalyzes burning, but at the same time introduces cooling. How about preheating blowed air somehow by second furnace with isolated air path?
@@siloton The flames shooting out the top of the chimney tell us the fire wasn't getting enough air. The light from the flame is incandescent particles from incomplete combustion. Best heat requires a balance, enough air for complete combustion but no excess.
Glad to see that you made it out here to the Corning Museum of Glass. It is one of the best hidden gems here in Upstate NY and a great source for information on the history of glass and glass-work. For those who are curious about glass making and would like to try it, the museum also offers classes where you can get similar hands-on lessons as well as make various glass crafts. I've personally gone several times and made my own wine glasses, glass pumpkin decorations, glass snowmen, and even Christmas ornaments to gift to friends and family.
@@Nono-hk3is Yes, if you go to the museum's website you will find on it listings for their Make Your Own Glass, where they list the small glass crafts, and the listing for the Studio, where they list the different classes. Classes are multi-week affairs whereas the Make Your Own Glass events are usually a single evening or afternoon event.
The part about how glass goes from brown, to amber, to green, to blue absolutely blew my mind! I’ve seen all these kinds of glass all my life but had no idea what made them happen, and now this even makes sense as to why so many beer and wine bottles are dark brown - no reducing agent to make it clear!
Modern glass is made with chemicals added to get uniform colors. Beer and wine bottles are made dark to block UV light which can kills the yeasts needed for the fermentation process.
@@Domarnett I’ve seen some pretty inconsistent shades from British breweries! Usually the fermentation is done before bottling in those beers as well. I know that’s not so much a thing in wine though and it makes sense why they’re so much darker as a result.
@@kaitlyn__Lin beers the bottle are brown because the UV light damages the hops. It's the volatiles (oils and whatnot) in the hops reacting to uv that "skunks" beer.
@@DH-xw6jp certainly not denying it’s useful, just sometimes the amount of brown is inconsistent like these samples rather than one solid colour just like wine bottles. I always loved the light shining through “blotchy” or “stripey” ones as a kid. And obviously the iron isn’t just “coming with” the materials like this sand was, so it’s always an additive, and iron being brown isn’t surprising. But it’s cool that iron can do the whole range, I always assumed the blue glass was copper.
This is what success looks like. Tiny iterations working toward victory, and even here when you've actually DONE IT, it still sin't going to feel very satisfying because it's not perfect. Keep going and see if you can't achieve optical quality glass, but failing that, the stuff you made looks up tot he caliber of the ancients, and that is no small feat. Well done.
I've seen a design for a high temp clay furnace like this that basically use an insulated double wall. There is an inner chamber for the fire and crucible, and an outer shell with a few inches of gap between them. The gap is then filled with loosely packed white ash from previous fires. The small air pockets in the fine powder and high temperature tolerance make an insulation that is high performing for something so primitive
The Corning Museum of Glass is a surprisingly awesome place. You might think it would be a "cool for 20 minutes and then you've seen it" thing, but it's at least a full day experience. Lots of cool stuff there, not to mention the classes and such.
Dude I know! I live only like 2 hours away from it so every summer I’ll go over and take a class for fun and then just spend the rest of the day there. There always seems to be something new to learn every time I go, they’re always changing around what they’ve got in the smaller exhibits
@@ImmortalLemon It's a bit more of a drive for me than that, but the time I went I was blown away by how much stuff was there and how interesting it all was. I only got to do one small class, but if I lived closer or had more free time I'd be taking a bunch more.
"There's this guy who nobody seriously doubts existed and was objectively the most influential person in all of history and we pegged the date to his birth for 2000 years but that has fallen out of political fashion and I'm either petty or a coward so I'm going to pretend it didn't happen" Everything that comes out of the mouth of a historian who says BCE is suspect.
@@fisharmor bro wtf are you even talking about right now? We’re talking about a glass exhibit here and nobody even knows how to interpret whatever you’re regurgitating from a podcast right now
Really amazing dedication as always from this channel! You probably heard about them at the Corning Museum, but early blow torches invented during the Renaissance made working glass way easier and way more fuel-efficient. I have a few videos on my channel of my reproductions of those blow torches if youre interested. they were used for making all sorts of things from chemistry equipment to the first microscopes and can be really incredibly powerful.
This is probably my favorite video you've made so far, it really shows the fruits of butting your heads together with other people to come up with a solution as they did in older times. It's always about finding the best way to make things easier when it comes to projects like these, isn't it? I loved how just moving a bunch of rocks in the right shape gave you a better result than what you had with a modern tool blowing air in, a great example of working hard vs smart!
The Corning Museum is a wonder! My wife and I spent almost a week there and didn't see everything. We did come away with a couple of glass bowls that we saw being made by the glass artists. Your technical deep dive into the process is very illuminating, and I really admire your dedication and determination in the videos. And you did some quite good first efforts at making decorative objects in clear glass.
I’d love to see an episode on canning (like mason jars). Lots of early ones were clay. Wax or rubber can seal them. It was a major step in humanity, the ability to transport and preserve “fresh” foods.
I found it interesting to think that very fine clay pieces have existed since before written word and yet humans spent literal millennia developing this hot, dangerous, expensive, difficult art. And overall none of it accomplishes something clay and iron can't, until relatively recently with scientific glassware and high pressure vessels. Imagine taking a mason jar to these people thousands of years ago, you'd be a god lol
Out of every skill you have gotten from this experience, none compare to how naturally you taken to glass. Glass and Flint napping have to be the two skills that you have the ability to master.
I think the extra step of making charcoal might still make sense at your scale. It will ensure the fuel is all extremely dry and will burn hotter, which would save you a bunch of time getting up to temperature on glass day and reduce the chances of a poor wood supply keeping you from succeeding. If you were cranking out glass every day, perfecting the wood fire is obviously a better option economically, but when your goal is successful glass blowing and not being financially profitable, take every edge you can get.
@@winter_baby9345Usually RU-vidrs with Patreon and/or RU-vid memberships will reward donating by releasing videos earlier for Patron and/or RU-vid memberships.
Your comment about glassmakers moving from place to place where there was plenty of firewood available, perfectly describes the German medieval "Waldglas" manufacturing ("Waldglas" means "forest glas).
I love that your reaching out more to experts in the fields of the things your trying to make. You've done it before but it's Really awesome to see. And to really learn about the history from people with real experience
I appreciate how you went classical tech on this. I've tried to go classic on a variety of metallurgy projects with much less success, always resorting to purchasing materials pre-refined, or using electric/gas heat. I eventually scrapped the classic methods and went with a time/money/efficiency based lab. My thing is refining precious metal, and figuring out what byproducts might be used for.
Excellent episode - I love how he takes us along for the ride. Also, 3:36 has to be one of the calmest explosion narrations on RU-vid in recent memory - doggo went from chillaxed to nope in no time flat.
One thing they don't talk much about is how badly scarred ancient glassmakers were. Burns were common and so was lung damage from breathing fumes and heat. At those temperatures, the furnaces could fail explosively if just a small amount of water hit a hot spot. So, it was a dangerous occupation. I'm glad you got through it with minimal harm.
I love complex glass objects and I have a collection of baubles, dishes, pipes, etc. and watching this it makes me feel like ancient royalty to have such delicate and hard to make objects
I’ve really got to hand it to Andy. This RU-vid channel seems like one of the last bastions of genuinely high quality RU-vid channels that don’t overtly appeal to toddlers.
Those flames shooting out of your chimney suggest either there isn't enough oxygen prior to that, or your chambers need to the longer to allow that combustion to happen inside the structure. You're wasting all the heat of flames coming out of the chimney. If you can make the height difference larger, that will help. you could also experiment with pre-heated secondary air intake injected after your primary burn chamber to ensure full combustion. Look up rocket stove design.
I took 4 semesters of glass blowing in collage. I might've cackled a bit when watching him get a lesson from a master. It's very hard! Good work though! This was fascinating!
The part of the book saying to make a sheep sacrifice to ensure a successful attempt reminded me of the thought emporium saying how microbiologists where superstitious and that if you told them that sacrificing a goat would ensure their bacteria didn’t die they would start keeping a pen of goats in there lab
Right on, these are some of the best videos, I can’t wait to see what else you do with the water wheel, possibly making an electric grid powered by hydro? Make a light bulb (I did this in grade 7 with pencil lead, a jar, and batteries) and Maybe attempt a copper wire? Try to take the energy of the water and turn it into a light source. Just a thought, love the vids keep it up
Why I love RU-vid! As a dilettante (nice high class word). I can access things that fascinate me explained by professionals, or active Amateurs looking to find and recreate methods and items that interest them and me. Great show!
I gotta say...this really conveys just how crazy the effort to make ancient glass must have been. The investment in time and materials in the ancient world would've been huge.
Really puts into perspective stuff like the Lycurgus Cup considering how hard primitive glass is to make, and how we cant even recreate the cup with modern glass making tech. People are like "wheres the proof of these so-called ancient advanced civilizations?" And i think the Lycurgus Cup is one such piece of proof.
Each video makes me appreciate all the modern mundane things we have, like a simple glass bottle with a beer or a wine in it. It has taken literally centuries to perfect those.
This is my favorite series you have been doing. I have been following you for years, and I never miss an upload, I wasn't here for the original sandwich, but it wasn't that long after that. It's amazing to see how close your getting.
That's amazing! It's super impressive you managed to make glass from raw materials and the fact that you got the glass into a shape blows my mind. Very cool video, there are so many interesting details around getting the fire just right
I genuinely feel that you're doing a real service to humanity by exploring all these ancient techniques which people discovered to create the basic things we take for granted today and offering us an insight into how it all works.
This was a great an educational video! I really liked the format of interviewing experts, showing the research, trying the technology, and then having a go at it yourself with the acquired knowledge.
You don't need a bellows or blower or anything that complicated. Grab your wood auger and hollow out a log. Fill it with kindling and tinder and get it started. If you carve a cone into one end, that end (the larger) will draw air in. These are called jet stoves or swedish torches. They last quite a while, at full send a 3 foot long ,12 inch wide log with a 3 inch bore will last about four to 6 hours. Just shove the log into your kiln near the bottom. If you use 3 of these logs then angle them in a way that the heat swirls upward. Just be sure to keep adding charcoal/wood/fuel in a way that will catch that heat.
@@techheck3358 They don't go into the furnace. They exhaust into the furnace. The heat exhaust provides air intake and heat. Same as the bellows or blower, just those don't provide heat only moving air. The logs are fitted to the furnace the same way as the bellows are, and those are removable.
@@WarkWarbly swedish torches cant burn sideways. they dont generate a draft (thats what the whole furnace setup actually does. its a reusable housing that generates a draft)
@@techheck3358 16:12 Is literally a jet stove. Instead of lightning the wood on fire and pushing it back, you just set the wood back, add a hollow log, light the middle up. And it will draw hot air inwards.
This is insane! It's been amazing seeing your progress during the past few years with glass, and this seemed like a major leap! Can't wait to see what you'll accomplish next.
Love these longer formatted videos! Great work so far, I recently started learning how to glassblow at my university too and it definitely harder than it looks
Having been to the Corning Glass Works & the Museum, the only thing that needs to be said is... mind blown! You could spend a major portion if your life exploring the 'World of Glass & never get remotely close to truly understanding this craft... Kudos to your efforts!
Reasons I want to learn this. 1. Imagine selling fantasy glass bottles that were in fact hand blown. 2. I always wanted to learn how to make said bottles. 3. It just looks fun. Reasons I don't wanna learn this. I know its going to take a long time. I know I will end up burning myself badly I know it wont be as fun as it looks.
People often forget that the invention of the chimney was one of mankind's greatest leaps forward. Before that, open fires filled homes and shops with smoke, which dramatically shortened lives. Unfortunately, many people in third world countries today have never heard of the chimney and continue the practice of open indoor fires.
Absolutely fascinating how the production of raw glass materials was then shipped across asia and europe to be then used to create the objects we find today.
In the future you could try using a trompe for your air, since it uses water but has no moving parts its a lot easier to run than a water wheel bellows. It was also commonly used for forges
You can do it. Don't give up. The road still has bumps ahead too, but keep going. Doesn't matter if we believe in you if you don't keep believing in yourself
I got randomly suggested a Saveit for parts video recently, and did NOT expect to see him here! Though im glad he is! hes got some real interesting videos!!
