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Hot Glass Q's

While we're talking about exotic torches and fun with chemistry, let me throw 
in a few silly questions on the basics.  Before I do, however, a hearty hy-oh 
Silv....uh....I mean thanks to Telford for the suggestion on cranking down the rpm 
on my "smog" blower by going to a smaller motor pulley.  Solved a huge part 
of the noise problem immediately, and I still have plenty of air and then 
some--see below.

Here's the Q's:

Everything I seem to put in the cannon fire appears to turn to pure lead very 
quickly, and I've got the flames dialed _way_ down.  I moved the heads back 
per John's suggestion, so now there's at least 3" between the inner blue 
flames; I also have the 3rd helper fire turned off.  The time between putting 
glass in the fire and having it soften seems comparable to what I see in the 
videos, but by the time "gravity starts to take effect"  [ yo Jacob! ] I can 
already see lead reduction big time.  If I have the flames any higher, the 
glass gets hot and workable _very_ fast, but it's still Leadsville.

The ribbon burner doesn't show quite as much a tendency to darken the glass, 
at least on the dialed-down mode I've got it on.  OTOH I probably do have it 
a bit lower than optimal, as it seems to be a little slow in getting the 
glass to working temperature.  Of course if I crank the flame up much higher, 
my ceiling starts making noises from the heat....and then I get darkening.

So what am I missing?  Could any of this have to do with the fact that I'm 
fueling with propane?  The cannon heads are EGL S-21 "A" models, and the 
ribbon burner is a 16" EGL "A" version also, so at least here I'm using name 
brand stuff and not jets scavenged from a 1968 4-barrel Holley carburetor!  
All this is happening with the gas barely cracked open at the needle valves, 
and the air probably running at about 1 psi.  The ..uh.."practice glass" I 
have *is* of possibly dubious origin--any chance that it could be improperly 
formulated?  Pretty much the same thing happens with 10mm and 12mm; haven't 
tried the 15mm yet nor the 5mm that I did get from a known source.

In the always-keeping-an-eye-out-for-opportunity department, if I can't turn 
myself into an acceptable tube bender, I can most certainly mount a couple of 
these ribbon burners on a truck and make a lot of money vaporizing snow in 
eastern cities.  With very little gas and a little air set just right, this 
baby makes an absolutely ENORMOUS flame...and I've got the malformed ceiling 
panels to prove it!

I know these are probably stupid newbie questions, but if y'all can bear with 
me, I'll be happy to shoulder some of the burden of answering a few for future 
newbies, either from my neon shop or my snow-vaporizing truck, whichever 
becomes my future reality.

Cheers,

JD



--
JD Schueler
lightem_up@socketis.net
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