Savannah morning news. [volume] (Savannah) 1868-1887, 1886-02-20
NEW WAY OF MAKING GLASS.
Furnace without CruoIbles and Its
Benefit to Blowers

Furnace Without Cruoibles and Its
Benefit to Blowers
From the Rel0 York Times.
After many years of the use in glass
works of crhcibles in the preparing of
glass for the pipes of the blower, a Ger
man named Ferrari has found a way Of
doing without them by the use of new
furnace, which now reaches its highest
exposition in the Bushwick Glass Works
of William BrOokfeld, situated on Grand
street, Brooklyn. There every day, Sun
days, of course, excepted, lot of glass
blowers may he seen exemplifying the
new system, which is, or may become, a
revOlutionlzer in glass blowing. 1t is a
simple method, and one which it would
seem ought to have presented itself to
glass blowers or glass bOttle-makers
years ago. Given a certain mixture
Of sand, soda ash, and lime, and the glass
blower is happy, but the glassmaker is
not necessarily so. He wants to reduce
the cost OF production. as we'll as increase
the normal value of the material. So in
Mr.. Brookfeld's establishment, where
have been made three-fourths of the tele-
graph insulators used in this country,
they are now trying the new system.
Under the Old-fasbiOned method a cruel
BILE of molder's clay capable of holding a
ton of glass mixture was made. The cru
chile itself was heated for SO or AZ hours,
carried on an iron frame called ''goat''
TO furnace. in which, heated to about
5000 deg. Fahrenheit, the glass material
WAS dumped. There the crucible and its
contents sizzled and boiled until the fol-
lowing morning, when the blowers stuck
their long, polished blowing tubes into
the white-hot mass, and from that drew
the material from which they blew bot
ties So soon as the mass in the glass
blowers crucible was exhausted so soon
he had finished his work.
Und the new method a man may
blow glass from one years end to the
other il he possess the wind and energy.
The supply of material is inexhaustible.
Crucibles are abolished. The mixture
necessary for common green glass is
dumped into great tank, which takes
the place of the five, six. or eight cruel
bles in the old fashioned furnace. When
the mixture has reached the necessary
liquid condition, and is molten glass, It
runs through a small flue into another
compartment, and into this the workman
sticks the end of his tube and picks up a
quantity of the material of which to blow
bottle. There are no crucibles to an
nOy him, or cheat him out of days work,
as the breaking of one may do at any time,
and mean while fresh glass mixture is be-
ing heated into molten glass at the other
end of the furnace.
AS matter Of economy the most i'm
pOrtant facts to the maker are that the
making Of crucioles is abolished; so vir-
tually Is the occupation of the ssmaster
shearers, the men who watch the cruci-
bles and place them in position for the
blowers TO draw from. Then the blowing
engines and all their accessories neces-
sary to the old system are done away
with, natural draught taking their place.
Under the old process IL required q ton of
coal to heat a ton Of glass to the necessary
consistency to be blown. In the new pro-
cess 1t only requires three-quarteFs OF a
ton to heat the same amount of glass,
Then, too, under the new the quantities
of soda ash and OF lime-the two expen-
sive materials-are materially reduced.
The product is not injured by the new
process, 50 far as careful experiments
show, but on the contrary, the glass as it
comes from the furnace to the pipe of the
blower, is denser and tougher, and when
II leaves the annealing furnace is certain
ly much more lustrous. Experiments
which Mr.. Brookfield and his superin-
tendent, Dir. Pease, have made show that
the expense OF running two furnaces of 10
tons productive capacity under the old
system Is, as compared with the new sim
gle furnace of equal capacity, 70 per
cent. greater in the cost Of labor, for at
tendance, and of fuel alone. The economy
of the new way, therefore, should bring to
the consumer of bottles considerable re-
duction in cost. The new system is vir-
tually combination of the SIemens gas
furnace system and the best features OF
the old pot or crucible system, involving
the least expense with the best and highest
productive caDacity