I've been making lampwork beads for over a year now. I tried torching in several different places. First, I tried the back deck. The problem with that I soon found out is that if it's at all windy, it could/would affect the flame.
I then started working at the kitchen table, which was great unless someone in the household actually wanted to eat a meal at the table. So, every night, I'd have to pack up the glass, torch, tools, etc. for the night. This got to be old rather quick so I built myself a little studio in our 1 car garage. When I say little, I mean little.
I built myself a table top using a piece of wood that someone had freecycled. I lined the walls with wonderboard, which is flame retardant. I even built myself a small cabinet to hold all my glass rods. The square dividers that you see are cut up fence posts. For some reason, the Home Depots around here don't stock it so I had those cut down for me by a fellow lampwork artist in Florida.
My kiln sits on the floor since I have insufficient counter space. What you don't see is my fire extinguisher that's mounted on a side wall within arms reach of where I torch ;-).
Here's another view of all my glass. I just looking at it, LOL!
The next photo shows a revolving plexiglass display that I purchased from Tower Records at their Going Out of Business sale. I lov
e this tower. It's where I keep all my presses and glass frit (ground up glass pieces used to decorate beads). Besides the fact that it rotates, it's on wheels so I can pull it closer to within arms reach when I'm torching.And here are photos of me actually torching in case you're curious to see.
