Hi John,
first: I am very sorry about your loss. Especially because you put so
much work into your equipment. But never give up. The moment we give in
to people like this we are no longer ourselves.
That's pretty good. I know some neon people who couldn't do a neck-down
that nicely. The only thing I'd do differently is to flare the small
tubing a bit before fusing the two so as to locate the splice is a
larger diameter area where it is stronger. With some practice and some
more heat you can stick it on using your method, then move the heat to
the smaller tubing and blow it out a little.
Thanks :-) I have some zinc-carbon batteries here (AAA size, quite
small) that I will cut open to extract some nice carbon rods that I can
use for forming the glass. I will use one of these rods for the purpose
you described: Flaring the small diameter tubing before sealing it on.
As I slowly rebuild my shop, my first fire is going to be a bench
burner. Relatively expensive but I can do everything except large bends
with it.
This will be my first investment after the needle valve. See the model I
am interested here:
http://www.arnold-gruppe.de/nc/glas-quarzglas/brenner/tischbrenner/productdetail/151167.html
The only thing you'd need a ribbon burner for would be blowing the tubing to a
larger diameter over a significant length.
That is why I asked. I will start purchasing only small diameter tubing
(5mm or 8mm) because you can buy these in small quantities. For the
larger diameters I will use test tubes (cutting off both sides that I
don't need) because for larger diameters it is very hard to get soda
lime glass in small quantities.
If I were serious about making true Nixie tubes, I'd go through
alibaba.com and find me a Chinese machine shop to make a set of dies to
make tube bases like they used to. They work amazingly cheap. The one
that extrudes our induction heater cases prices CNC machine work to the
cases at $1 an hour. No, I didn't miss any zeros.
How exactly would you proceed making - say - 13 pin tube bases? You need
a lot of temperature for that and precisely formed tools. So far this is
nothing I can see myself doing in the near future. I know a person who
makes his own (borosilicate glass) sockets, I might be able to adopt the
principle some day.
Obviously scrappers. All my lovingly hand crafted tools are now melted
down and made into an I-beam or something.
I am very sorry to hear that. But it would be a shame if it was for
people like this to stop us from making the neon glow, wouldn't it?
Jens
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