Started the Furnace Again

We started the furnace today!

As most of you know we shut down the furnace about the middle of January due to Micah's injury (again, not glass related). I wasn't in the glass blowing mood and with no helper I just shut it down for a short time.

We were going to start it last week but as we were checking it out and tweaking a few things, I saw that the burner head was trashed. I ordered a new Giberson Burner Head from Mr. Giberson @ Joppa Glass. It came in Friday. Also, I had ordered a new Flat Lap Grinder with an assortment of different diamond discs from Holly @ Denver Glass. It also came in on Friday. It is really sharp! It will make grinding a whole lot better. We can grind our paper weights and vases flat and optically clear. We really needed one.

Micah is doing better. For the first couple of days, it looked like he might lose his eye, but he is not going to lose it. The doctor is going to fit him with a new lense later this month. We are confident he will be able to see then. I want to thank everyone who has written, called, or conveyed their concern for him. It meant alot to us!

We are exicited to get back to blowing glass and creating some great art!

I expect it to take 4 - 6 days to slowly bring the furnace up to temp. It was almost full when I shut it down. From what I have been told, it needs to go back up slowly. We have been so busy at the restaurant, we haven't had much time to do a whole lot on the studio. Out of the last 12 months we have set a new all-time record in sales for 8 of those 12 months and are on pace to break our last record which was set again last month, by a significant amount. Good problem to have! Anyway we are going to do our best to finish tweaking the studio during the start-up time.

We will be posting when we start blowing.
Bye for now.
CM