The radial arm polisher (on the left) uses diamond disks to finish glass and stone flat pieces up to 6 by 9 feet.
Glass is about as heavy as granite per cubic foot, so we use a 2 ton hoist (yellow) and 1 ton shop crane (red) to handle larger pieces.
Diamond grinding wheels and various others are used to finish work all the way to an optical polish if required.
Large antique stone wheels (on right) are used for a type of glass engraving refered to as glass "cutting" as in- cut crystal.
To the right of the closeup of the radial arm machine is a a glass drill (darker blue). We use this with various diamond holesaws for working glass and stone.
This studio is for fine cold work.
The basic design of this new glass engraver has changed little in hundreds of years.
Flat glass, stringer and block glass are stored here. Layout and flat glass cutting is also done here.
The 2 ton hoist (in the foreground) is used to move larger pieces from the kiln room into the cutting room where they can be transferred the Cold working studio.
This is one of our large glass fusing kilns and is capable of producing pieces up to roughly 2 x 5 x 1 ft. in size. Such a piece of solid glass would weigh about 1 ton.
Just to the right of the kiln is the firing computer (small metal box with blue face) which is used to control the complex temperature cycles the glass must go through depending on type, thickness, overall design, and process the piece is being created with.
Manipulating glass rod and small scale glass blowing using an oxy/natural gas torch is done here.