Today I had my first day helping out at the glass department. I was asked to help out rebuilding their furnaces and as I had never done this before I was very interested in helping out. The first furnace was basically already finished and only needed some final placement of the heating elements which went very smoothly. Unfortunately the other furnace was another story. The pot where the glass sits in has cracked open which means that a lot of glass had leaked out finding its way everywhere! The technician told me she had never seen a furnace in such a bad shape. For me it doesn't matter that much since I can now help rebuilding the whole thing experiencing how it is done, but I realize that this is not something you would like to happen in your department. It will take a long time to rebuild and we might not be able to finish it before the students start in in 2 weeks. Luckily there are 2 of them so there should be one ready for them to work with.
This is a picture of the roof that was made for the first kiln, the heating elements will be going down through the holes into the furnace area.
Here is a picture of what the top looks like when the elements are in place, they just need to be connected.
And this shows the roof of the second furnace, there was a gap in between one of the elements and the insulation and as you can see the heat did some damage over time.
This is the second furnace once we removed the top insulation and started on clearing the front out aswell.
On this picture you can see the pot that has cracked, we will have to replace pretty much everything.
Hopefully I will be able to show you a picture of what the finished furnace looks like soon.
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