Mike Firth's Backyard "Studio"

Doors

Furnace

Diagonal line at bottom is lot line (lot is parallelogram).  Other side lot line is about 10 feet up from top edge (lot is 50' wide)  Alley is about 30' beyond right edge.  Large gate in fence gives access to narrow paved alley.

The stand has wheels at one end (hidden by the white bucket on the left) and the white shelf to the right also serves as a handle for moving. Resting on the shelf are the controller covered by a Plexiglas cover I made. The controller came from Love Controls and is a single ramp, self-learning controller that cost about $200 and is about 2" x 2" x 4".

The frame below is the new welded one, from 1/2" square tubing, not yet painted and without wheels. It replaces one shown in some other pictures made of wood that lasted for about 9 years. 2001-06-07

FURNACE - Notes and furnace under construction furnaces.htm

The door below, cast in a pie pan, is not a good choice, because the castable cracks across the bolt lines. It should have been cast in a band of steel with a bolt adjustment for tightening, [Which was done with its replacement, here] (The unit on top of the furnace is a 1000 watt heating element set in a groove in a block of castable that is used for drying out and preheating the glory hole and furnace when they have not been used for some time in wet weather.) See doors.htm

TOOLS - While it may be useful and pleasant to have several hundred dollars in tools at hand when working glass, it is not necessary and most glass workers have one or more tools that is really cheap but handy and useful. Ironically, now that I see this picture on the screen, the most heavily used tool and most homemade is not in the picture - I made my own jacks.

• BUGS - In Texas we have these mud daubers that look like small wasps but don't sting. They do, however, try to make a nest wherever they can, which includes the holes in blow pipes, which they fill with mud which dries hard. An internet discussion suggested golf tees or small pieces of wood to block the opening and said any location with open walls has the problem. The most obvious suggestion is to make sure the pipe are clear before using them.
  Mosquitoes are a major problem in the south, especially with West Nile Virus around.  Any container of water, like a block bucket or crack off bucket, can show larvae.  But the answer is easy - go to a hardware store or garden center and ask for a bottle of the small grits or granules of BT mosquito larvae control. These are sold for small ponds, birdbaths, water gardens, etc. BT is Bacillus thuringiensis which is a living organism that attacks wiggly larvae - it is used on worms on plants in other subspecies. Although the bottle in front of me does not make the claim, one brand actually said it makes the water better for birds by adding protein.
  This stuff looks like grape nuts. Instructions call for a teaspoon for every 25 square feet. Think about the size of a bucket. 5-10 granules is enough for a bucket. In my bird feeder and block bucket outdoors, one application is good for about two weeks. The container says 7-14 days. I usually go out about once a week and look at all the water standing around and either add a few granules - the bottle has a shaker top - each time or more if I see larvae.  The stuff starts to work very fast in the immediate area of the granules - you can see the larvae start to wiggle frantically and die, but it takes a while settle to the bottom and to drift through the water, 24 hour kill per the bottle. The stuff is also sold in blocks (Mosquito Dunks brand from this company) but these are for ponds and a waste of money for adding to a small container. If kept dry, the stuff lasts for years. Read the label before you buy and contact the company involved if you have concerns. There is a skin contact warning, but I take this to mean for the granules, not the water with a reasonably small quantity in it. [Confirmed by e-mail from the company]  Summit Chemical - Mosquito Bits 2006-04-02
  Wood is chewed to shreds by various bugs, so anything on the ground must be pressure treated. One reason for rebuilding the support for the annealler in metal was the deterioration of the the wood at the bottom.  Pressure treated wood on and near the ground is a partial answer.
• RAIN - Obviously, gear needs to be more or less protected from the weather, including rain. In addition to the discussion of temperature changes below, insulating blanket, castable, and fire brick can absorb water and if heated too fast the water can flash to steam blowing apart the material. Water in blanket can so lower the insulating value that it may take days to cook it out. When I left the lid of my annealer askew when rewiring it and it rained, I drilled a pair of holes in lower part of the case and water dribbled out. In a picture above, a heating element is shown that I use for drying out the gas heated gloryhole and furnace to drive off moisture over several hours. If the humidity has been high or there has been a lot of rain, I pre-dry the gloryhole.  I commonly keep my annealer on and set to 90F so that it is warmer than the outside air at night most of the year. [D above]
  Still being used, but built earlier, is a wood frame hut, also with open sides, [C above]   This picture is from 1999 at a time of garage reconstruction.  The trees behind are now grown over it and at one point a mass of thorny roses grew over the top - since died and torn out.  Although braced, when there was no bottom connection, the legs were forced out, bowing the top down, which was corrected by jacking the center and using a ground level wire across the back.
  
  At right below the glory hole door is shown a roughly bent sheet metal cover for the yoke which protects the two ball bearing transfer units shown here from water damages.

• TEMPERATURE CHANGES - Obviously, when the temperature drops through freezing, water buckets and other wet places need to be protected or emptied. And high temperatures can melt wax used on tools.
  As the temperature rises and falls each day, equipment can be damaged by the moisture from humidity. Part of my annealer is rusty from this process. It happens because the temperature inside the annealer is always "behind" the daily temperature changes. In the evening, the inside may be 85°F while the outside air has cooled to 60°F with high humidity. As the air in the annealer cools and contracts, humid air is sucked in, cooling on the metal case and getting the whole wet. I have recently been setting my annealer at 90°F to avoid that fluctuation, especially into the higher humidity range.
  Pipes can collect water inside and can condense moisture from the breath when cold enough. There was a thread on this problem in cold studios, not just outdoors. Besides corrosion that can occur, there is a risk of being burned, because when the water drips on the hot head, it flashes to steam which rapidly heats the pipe for several feet back from the head. Solutions include blowing out the pipes with compressed air, storing them on a rack above the furnace, and having a pipe heater that holds the pipes at an angle so air flows through them.
• GROUND CONDITIONS - When working outdoors, it is better to have a concrete slab and probably better to have a pounded bare floor (like a blacksmiths) than grass, but Art regrets not putting a slab in his otherwise enclosed studio because rain does blow in and the dirt gets slippery. A slab clearly costs money and effort, although I managed to put a slab in my garage without killing myself. One problem with a slab is that it places clear limits on the space and walking off the edge tain't fun (if digging down for a ground level slab is out of the question.) [Picture shows 5.5 x 6.5 foot raised slab installed to get equipment out from under wood frame roof. D]
  • GRASS - Looking at some of my pictures will quickly reveal that grass grows everywhere and cutting it is not one of my favorite activities. And I don't like killing it with kill-all chemicals. So I have a gasoline powered string cutter for trimming and try to arrange things so mowing is not incredibly difficult. A good point of grass is that if you drop a piece and want to, you can usually rescue it unbroken. Several of my pieces have carbon-from-burned-grass images on them.
  • DRY GRASS - Texas has long periods in the years with little or no rain where the grass dries out and causes a fire hazard. I trim more industriously and keep a garden hose ready with a cutoff valve at the end for quick use. I usually wet down the area around the gloryhole first.
  • SOFT GROUND - While the dirt in our area turns to the consistency of concrete when really dry, it absorbs water like a sponge and it is possible to have 2" of rain fall in the yard and have no run off. When the ground is this soft, equipment has to be planned for it. Even if I had a concrete slab [added in 2001], I am not sure I would mount casters permanently on the equipment, which is heavy enough to require costly casters that are hardly used and will dent under the weight with time.
    In any case, I build my equipment with rails at ground level on the sides and 6" up on the front and back. This is most easily visible on the bench above. The side rails provide plenty of area to keep the units from sinking into the ground. The uniform height of the front and back means I can either roll a caster rig under the rails or lift the unit on to taller casters. I have a fairly expensive set of casters that will carry 4,000 pounds which I keep out of the weather and to which I rig various platforms for moving scaffolding and glass stuff. In reality, the 6" rail height is too low for these casters and it gets lower as the side rails crush the dirt and grass, so I usually end up levering the side rails up onto 2x4's before moving.  Pressure treated 1x4's or 2x4's laid flat would reduce sinking.  If I had to do a lot of moving, I would weld up a low rig with a jack or screw built in and get casters with wider soft wheels to avoid sinking into the soft ground.
• AIR CONDITIONS - Air in Texas is memorably hot and is wet more often than I like to consider, especially in recent years. See notes on humidity & temp changes above. When the wind is blowing, shelter from the sun must be anchored (next). It is also very drying, beyond the exposure to the furnace heat, so I keep water, soda, and Gatorade on hand (buy Gatorade in powder form - 1 gallon envelopes or bigger - at sporting goods stores or jars on the top shelf of grocery stores to save money over bottled.)  I have a couple of floor fans that don't get much use; I find shade is more important outdoors. Ventilation choices
• LIGHTING - In bright sunlight, it is possible to work with a #5 welding shield in place and still see to maneuver although best practice suggests not.  At night, background lighting is required for safety and detail lighting helps. Overall and security lighting are provided by a yellow high pressure sodium fixture that is very efficient and long lasting and comes on every night automatically, giving reasonable lighting for the whole backyard from a mount about 15' up on a conduit set above the corner of the garage.  Further area lighting is provided by a 75 watt ordinary bulb mounted on a 10' pole [f]above a (barely) moveable concrete base; an aluminum shield guards the bulb from rain and reflects half the light back down.  Under the edge of both shelters [C D] are bulbs, some CFB's, just above my head, controlled by switches centrally located. 2008-04-29
• ELECTRICITY - Working outdoors demands added steps for safety with electricity since all metal must be assumed to be grounded and a path for a shock and when the ground is damp, that is another path.  All my electrical outlets are up under the roof of shelters just above my head and all are fed by GFCI's. All wiring contains a safety ground. 2008-04-29

• SUN - Working outdoors in Texas means sun a fair chunk of the year. I don't like getting burned or cooked, so I wear long sleeve cotton shirts or work into the evening or put up shade. After several attempts with tarps on poles and tent-like arrangements - which the wind played havoc with and which were hard to relocate - I welded up a frame.
  The vertical posts are 8' long and the unit is 4' wide. Everything is 1" square 16 gauge steel tubing. Thru the angled upper part, I insert 10' long 1/2" conduit pieces on which I drape a blue plastic tarp fastened to two more 10' conduits, (originally) lashing the conduits together. Instead of trying to put a set screw in the angled part, I braised a 1/4" nut to a short piece of square tubing and use this as a stop collar on the tubing. The cross bars are positioned so the lower is high enough to permit picking up the unit with one hand low and the other high so it can be moved rigged. On windy days, I hang a chunk of concrete from the lower crossbar.

• Welded sun shade set up with conduit supporting cheap blue 8' x 12' tarp.  Originally, the cross bars were lashed into place. This required tipping the frame forward to get it into reach, often awkward, taking up a lot of space in a small clutter yard and catching over head. Recently (2002-06) I added three T's made of 3/4" conduit tubing that slide on the upper bar of the shade. The outer two fit over the side 1/2" conduit to keep the cross piece in place and the middle one receives a piece of spare conduit for lifting the shade into place. Originally, I thought I would be lifting the whole from this end, but that turned out to be very awkward. So I set the whole near the bottom, tie the lower bar in place and lift the top bar into place (I am 6'2" and can reach it from the ground.) To keep the center under control, a short rope is stuffed around it to jam the T so it wasn't too loose.

• The latest addition to my outdoor working is this 7 foot long rain shield for the rack full of heating things - insulating castable and fiber kilns, foundry Firehole and forge.  The metal tubing is 1/2" thin wall conduit with two straight pieces for stiffening along the edges of the corrugated sheet metal, all of which is drilled together with self-drilling big head sheet metal screws.  The curved sections were bent with a conduit bender.  The verticals that curve to the right move the pivot point back so the raised position is more out of the way and the lowered covers the hardware front and back.  Extra conduit was left to one side of shield, drilled 1/4" to provide a pivot.  Similar drilling on the verticals and bolts make the pivot.  In the raised position, shown, a rope ties it off.  In the lowered, a chain runs from the vertical to the end of the extra. 2003-08-15 [A]