Ok, maybe not everyone, but unfortunately mine. This past week I had a glassalanche; that is, some of the raw glass material I have stored in my shop did a lovely sharp cascade to the floor. Luckily the actual damage was fairly minimal, a couple containers of scrap and short rods of glass spilled, and a little clear glass got broken, but the spatial damage is far worse. My bench is now full of the clear glass that I had to yank out of the precariously teetering tubes it was living in.
On top of not being in my shop because I was sick, now I can’t make anything because the glass is in my way. I’m finally feeling well enough to light the torch, but I need to build a new and safer home for the supplies. So I’ve started building a sturdy wooden shelving unit for one particular spot in my shop, and I’m not entirely convinced it’s going to be sufficient to hold the glass that needs to be moved, AND some other glass in cases that needs to be moved out of the way to make room for the shelves.
One little problem I’ve run into, however, is that I underestimated the amount of glass I need to house. The space I thought I might be able to put the shelves into currently has two cases of glass and a compressor in it. I figured, hey fine, I’ll put the glass in the cases in the shelves with the other glass, it’ll be fine. Unfortunately, the stuff in the cases is 25 mm and 44 mm tubing, and each tube (assuming they’re unbroken…) is 5 ft long. That’s right, if you buy a full case, it’s shipped to you in long coffin boxes. You get a pretty decent price on it, but if you’re not in a large space, it’s a pain to store. One possible solution might be a little creative switching around in my shop, musical chairs so to speak, but I don’t know.
By the way, for the non-glass making folks reading, material storage is a perennial problem. Every 3-4 months I see another post on at least one of the forums asking how folks do theirs.
In the end I’ll get it sorted, but in the mean time my torch is cold and lonely for a few more days. I should probably throw some fusing projects into the kiln in the mean time. The killer is I have a couple of custom items on the radar that folks are interested in, a chess set to finish for a collaborative project, and of course seasonally appropriate inventory to build up for a show in May (and hopefully sell some of before then).
Until next time, try to do something creative and new!