Red Max Torch

Is that not a happy grin? Biiiiiigger Flaaaaame.

So, on Saturday, I got to play on the Red Max. Really - this torch is a bit much for soft glass - I think you would have to be really power-hungry to consider this torch for full time soft glass work.

That said, I did manage to make some beads.









This second and third pic gives you a better sense of the size of the flame. The flame gives off a LOT of ambient heat too. Glass laying on the table underneath the torch gets uncomfortable to pick up. Tools get hot, stay hot.

Glass fries. And spatters.

My goal, when I sat down, was to make the largest horse bead I had ever made. I don't know that it was particularly large. I was quite pleased that I managed not to melt the ears into little stubs.


You see the black "mud" marks on his neck - that's spatters of black glass flying off when I did the mane. And if you click on the close-up - you can see the bubbles in the encasing from my frying the glass.





















And this bead is another exercise in excess. There are 3 x 13 inch rods of ivory in that bead. Hey - at least I had no problem getting enough heat to get all the colours out of the raku frit. Unfortunately, I couldn't cool it down fast enough. The glass stays hot longer, moves longer. Dots are harder.

This torch does have a top mounted torch - in this case, it is the Pre-mix. It gives you a needle-like flame. Boy - did I fry the glass with that!





And one more exercise in excess - a massive dichro honker that is more suitable as a paperweight.

You can see some burning in the glass. Course, the clear probably could have been cleaner. Overall - not too horrible actually.












OK - so I then tried some boro. Bear in mind that while I admire boro from a distance - I basically suck at it. This rather slug-like finial thing amazed me by coming off the mandrel. I actually burned THROUGH the mandrel - apparently the boro folks don't hold the mandrel IN the flame, and had to punty a glass rod onto the mandrel to finish it. It doesn't move anything like soft glass.

The Red Max - yes - you can use it for large soft glass projects - massive murrini cane comes to mind. And for boro. I would be inclined to say that this torch isn't really for the primarily soft glass oriented flameworker - but there are always exceptions to the rule.

There's another torch in the Nortel echelon - bigger still - the Rocket. I didn't try that one. ;-) Yet.