The larger fire pit test looked very attractive - enough to warrant the expense of the bricks. But you're going to drop this project? Because of the concern of the bricks exploding? I would really like to see a finished solution because the look is quite stunning.

If heat is your concern, why not keep the glass bricks from getting to hot? It wouldn’t be easy but if you could water cool the inside to keep the temp lower. Essentially a thin waterfall on the inside wall.

Loved the experiment none the less, thanks for bringing us along with you

Annealed glass shouldn't have enough internal stress to explode. If it isn't, the cooling cycle as a fire pit will be too short to anneal them yourself and they will definitely go boom. If you observe any chipping at the edge, concoidial (wave) type fracturing is an indication that it is just normal glass (maybe boro) and not tempered, tempered will not tolerate chipping. Tempered glass can be dangerous in fire, it is under tremendous stress from diferential cooling (they blow air on it which causes the surface to "shrink" the main bulk cools slower and pulls that surface so the edge is very sensitive and under high stress) fire will accentuate that being on one side. You just need the "right" glass for it and you'll be fine, something like annealed borosilicate ideally but sodium glass is probably fine. Near all glass is annealed and tempered in someway or another. It's like baking, the same dozen ingredients could fill a recipe book based on the various combinations of them vs time and temp.

I'm watching you cut them now and split it, they are as soft as glass comes. They probably cooled down for several days if not longer in the heat treatment. They won't explode. They may crack if one side is tremendously hot suddenly (like a torch) with the rest cold. It has such a mass, the temp differential won't we extreme. It isn't a thin section bottle that cannot be evenly heated outside an oven. It is a brick.

I was thinking the same, or even a buried air vent to bring the fresh up right up under the fire. I was also wondering if there would be a way to control the direction of fresh air to focus/contain the heat in the center and up, and therefore less on the glass?

@@IAmKyleBrown Yeah, the simplest method would be to get a 8-10ft length of electrical conduit and a pipe bender. Put a short 90deg bend on the end of several 2ft lengths and lay them so that they bring air straight up through the middle. Too easy. Occasionally you'd need to clean out the pipes but that should take all of about 30 seconds with a flexible stiff bristle brush.

I came to the comments to make the exact same suggestion! :)

yeah technically smoke is unburned fuel.

@@IAmKyleBrown if you angle all of the air gaps sharply you might be able to force a vortex in the updraft

How does glowing red glass damage eyes? By looki g at it or the risk of shattering?

thank you! 2023 was a busy year for outside of KZfaq but now that the hotel is under construction I can focus a little more on videos

1. This is called thermal shock, and how well a glass handles it depends on composition of ingredients. Look at typical glass dining ware and glass bakeware or laboratory glass, the reason the latter can handle temperature and shock is due to their composition of added ingredients. Thermal shock will be problematic, considering you're taking the temperatures of flame-licked glass and temperatures of rain and producing a very wide temperature swing in many pinpoint areas with decently high frequency. 2. Certain materials can be difficult within different spectra, glass is a bit of a mixed bag with IR. For example, greenhouses allow IR into them for heating purposes, but certain blends of glass will be reflective with thermal imaging. Though reflectivity can also be problematic, such as with metals giving inaccurate readings due to their mirror-like qualities within the IR spectrum. Doing this is honestly a waste of time and effort. Maybe you can get something off the soot but that's also going to be an insulative layer of different properties, so it's still a waste of time then. 3. Heat of the material depends on various thermal properties and where you're actually measuring. Surface temp will obvious be hotter than external, but what's important is how the material resists the heat or conducts it. This also circles back to the first point and how material quality handles heat stress. Assuming the blend itself can survive heat, it should be fine for this application, as long a you're not building it directly around the fire. The optimal design for this would more than likely be a shallow interior pit, a secondary glass wall, and that glass wall being topped with typical brick/stone with overhang on both the interior and exterior edges, with a protective cover for the glass when not in use and for weathering purposes.

@@xaytanathanks google

yeah something cool about solid glass chunks

Thank you! Cheers!

I would suggest diamond bricks , Ali baba has em for cheap 😂😂

Great suggestion!

Found them!

yes! I think this is the right combo