Corina's Book is expensive but well worth it.
This book has almost everything you want to know about how to make lampwork beads.

Great book for ideas another book of gorgeous pictures.

My Studio

Most lampwork bead makers are interested in what other lampworkers do and where they work and on what.

First let me say I live in the middle of the San Joaquin Valley which is the heart of California. Actually our weather here is pretty mild except for short periods of time in dead winter and the hottest part of summer. We can in the summers reach 110 but usually not for very long stretches. Last year was an exception. For the most part the evenings cool off enough to make the morning fairly nice. Winters can be cold and foggy but no snow.

So my area is bright and well lighted with plenty of fresh air. No noxious fumes to contend with. There is always a slight breeze from the west but I have learned to contend with it quite well.

As you can see I run 2 Mini CC burners. I started out with a hothead in class and immediately purchased a MidRange Plus. What did I know? Clearly nothing! I burned up more stuff on that torch and what I did not burn up came out smutty gray. The good thing is when I got my Mini CC I was practiced enough to have wonderful success. No more fish fins flying off into the wild blue yonder because the whole fish including fins did not stay warm. The Mini CC has a wide fluffy flame that can keep an incredibly large bead from cracking without much effort. Don't you beaders hate to hear that snap when you are working on one side of a focal and forget the other side? Why does this happen most often when you are working on a very complicated bead just as you are finishing up the last steps?

I have an oxygen generator from OGSI it is an OGSI 20. I can easily run my 2 Mini CC burners at one time. A fun thing when my daughter comes to play which actually is not often enough.

My OGSI 20 was pretty expensive ($2000 shipped to CA from NY). I have never regretted it since other bead people I know have purchased reconditioned other brands for much less and had to end up adding a second or 3rd to run their torch. I figured the money saved in frustration and time waiting forever for glass to melt was worth a brand new generator that was a little more. I can recommend this company since they bent over backwards in customer service.

When I started collecting glass I ordered all of the colors that Moretti had. My idea was to start with one COE to make life simple. That lasted for about 3 months then I decided Bullseye had some great colors too so I collected those. Then rather than keeping glass in piles on the kitchen or dining room table I needed something to store them in. So I marched down to Home Depot and purchased a plain white (in stock) kitchen cabinet. It sort of matched the cabinets I had already built for my patio. It was an easy put together and fast. I then marched back to home depot and purchased a couple of plastic rain gutter pipes. I knew (I measured) that rain pipe if cut into short sections would fit flat 5 across the cabinet floor. I cut this pipe in lengths about 3" shorter than my glass rods. Then to make things even better I started saving the core (cardboard) of our paper towels. We go through them like Grant went through Richmond. So shortly I had plenty to use in glass storage. It seems I can store 1 lb of class in each paper towel core. So in the rain pipe I put 2 paper towel cores which gives me the rain pipe plus 2 cores to store glass which is equivalent to 3 glass colors per rain pipe. I then arranged the glass according to color ranges. Pretty neat set up. Alas I have now run out of room in the one cabinet (which only has Moretti and Vetrofond). I have enough glass to halfway fill another just like this.

That challenge is ahead and the glass again is housed on the dining room table over flowing to the kitchen. This situation will not last long before hubby starts to grumble.

The lighting is the great California sun. Which is most of the time shining at some time of the day. My favorite time is late afternoon since my house backyard faces the West and the large pine trees offer pretty good filtered light.

Last but certainly not least is my digital kiln. I LOVE IT! It is a KenJen and it works great for what I am doing. I am very familiar with kilns since for many years I worked in ceramics, china painting and porcelain. Then way back in the olden days I slumped glass. I did keep my big kiln just in case I wanted to venture back into any of those hobbies. Way back then we had nothing digital so we had to look through a peep hole and watch a cone slump. Finally my big kiln came out with a mechanism that automatically shut off when the cone slumped (that was our digital 30 years ago). Anyway if I were to do the bead kiln over again I would have a taller door. This one is maybe 3 inches tall and I would like a little more room when depositing a bead inside. Oh just a last note. The glass cabinet from above is the one sitting beside the kiln. To be honest I do not know where I will put another. I have thought of throwing away my entertaining dishes that are housed in the built in cabinets along the same wall but then we would have to eat off paper plates. How cool is Scampi on a paper plate?