He builds them and plays them.
Rick, I’ve never seen that many Banjos in one room before. That smile on your face is almost as big as the one you showed when you got the PRU.
@rbtdanforth, I always enjoyed watching glass crafting. The motions are like flowing water.
I have a pair of those asbestos gloves, strange to reach into a 2,000 degree kiln, grab a glowing flask and have no hint of heat. 
It is like flowing water as the glass is a liquid, The glass house at Penland has a big sign that says “Gravity has a big influence on my work” When making jewelry you can put it down at any point and answer the phone or even go get lunch and come back to exactly what you left. With glass if you lose attention for a moment, just to see who walked into the room for example, your piece may be lost or at least ruined. The result is the most highly addictive craft I have ever encountered. Like a Kata, how you hold your toe makes a difference in the result in an infinite butterfly effect as the motion and temperature of each tiny bit affects everything else and that needs to be managed moment by moment.
I got a taste of that once after watching a guy build small figurines with a propane torch and Pyrex rods. He made it look so easy, I thought “I’d like to try that.” Yeah. I got a lesson on the needed skill real quick. 
Not that I’m going to encourage you to jump into a new craft…but this is the Glowforge of hot glass work 
“Glory Hole” 
Nah, I enjoy watching the craftsmen, but not enough remaining life minutes for me to venture into that!
After free-handing another plasma cut Bat’leth I found myself thinking of your rig… 
Seriously? There’s a reason for making more than one? That’s a 10 minute job. (200 ipm cutting speed)
Are they longer than 4 feet?
What are you making yours out of?
When I first entertained the plasma I thought about doing the freehand process for bears and things. Doable but smaller more manageable sized stuff was definitely going to expose the limitations of my hand-eye coordination 
I made that first one and my son begged it off me. I decided I would have one of my own. They are 3/16 mild @48" long.
Actually the cutting wasn’t that bad, it’s the edge grinding that hurts.
This was difficult freehand. Hard not to melt the thin spots, 3/16, about a foot tall.
(sorry for hijacking your thread @cynd11 )
Wow! Super nice.
That would be where my hand-eye coordination issue would present itself 
The CNC is good because you can get really consistent speeds which takes care of the dross. I wonder if I could create a cutting bevel by tilting the torch in its mount so it cuts at a slant. 
Thanks!
Oh man. I thought of that, I was thinking the term is gouging? Tilting the torch would be cleaner I think.
Sloppy CNCers don’t get the torch perpendicular to the bed and then complain about the bevel This would be doing it deliberately to get the bevel. Then it should be a straightforward cleanup with a flap wheel or 1" vertical belt sander for polish instead of grinding to get the bevel.
The final finish could be fun. There are some neat techniques dyeing steel that could be very different than the traditional polished steel with a clearcoat. My blast cabinet isn’t big enough to do a 4ft one though so no powder coating 
Yeah, built the one in the picture at the school. Because we had to complete in a week it wasn’t completely from scratch. The rim had already been glued and steam bent. When I got home I built a couple even better banjos completely from scratch. With the class and a little help from Youtube on how to steam bend wood, I had all the knowledge needed. Grabbed some rough maple boards from my son’s sawmill and took away everything that didn’t look like a banjo.
One of my favorite things about the Glowforge community—- hijacking a thread is so common.
A post is started about leather 70 replies later someone is making a comment about dog shampoo.
I think it shows a genuine, sincere, and friendly banter among the community members.
We are different ages, we live in different cities and countries, some of us are just housewives, some of us are multi talented engineers, some of us are retired, we all have different opinions and we do our best to try to avoid conflict.
I believe each of us have the same two personality traits and those traits bring us together. We all have an imagination to create different types of art and we appreciate and respect the process.
@cynd11 Your posts always inspire me and am looking very forward to the day we will share a bowl of popcorn together.
That alone is a problem, having exploded pieces rain down on the glass (with all their colors) and a fuel bill of a Glowforge pro every month. You can’t let the glass cool with out cleaning out all of it, and then more than a day to heat up again. (glass having a much greater coefficient of expansion than the container, going cold will tear it apart.)
Cubic zirconia clay is very expensive, but while everything will dissolve in hot glass, zirconia is almost insoluble. So pots made of CZ in a very insulated furnace will pay their way in money not spent on fuel, and random pieces of your work will not pollute it. Add the plus of a glory hole only on when you are using it, and the savings will pay for considerable costs.
Thank you for the explanation. New to this area of craft, but your description makes it seem within reach!
How you managed to mix those colors so well, the blue are my favorite. Probably because of my affinity for Turquoise.
The watercolors you did are beautiful. I am a particular fan of the yellow ones, they look just like amber to me.
I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist the temptation.
I’d need a semi trailer…
Needs the caption:
“You can take it with you.”
I recall that some wealthy Japanese guy bought a very famous painting (several million dollars) and then had it buried with him so he would not have to give it back to the world. It created a lot of outrage at the time.
