Setting Up Your Home Studio with Natural Gas

I took a local lampwork class and the instructor mentioned that I could set up my workbench to run my Nortel Minor Burner torch with natural gas. I researched how to do it, and got bits and pieces from different forums. Since I could not find a basic tutorial, I decided to write one.

Difficulty: Medium-Difficult (working with gas is dangerous so do not attempt this project without the assistance of a proper plumber or minimally a layperson who has done it before)

Necessary Equipment:
1) natural gas line
2) ventilation hood
3) stable work bench
4) oxygen tank or oxy concentrator
5) flexible oxy/gas lines
6) misc adapters for the lines
7) hose clamps
8) wire/chain/nylon string to hold up vent

Necessary Tools:
1) Drill
2) Jig saw
3) pliers

For starters, your house needs a gas line. Some houses do not have natural gas, they run electric water heaters, electric dryers and electric ovens/stoves. Lucky people have natural gas lines into their house.

Properly installed shut-off valve to my torch.

Have a plumber (or pipefitter) come out and run a line near your workbench. If you cannot afford that, it's not so hard to insert a "T" and a shut off valve and some additional black pipe, just as if you were installing a gas dryer. Measure out what you'll need and have them thread the black pipe at the shop where you buy it. Perhaps choose an area near an existing gas line (near your existing gas dryer) to have minimal expenses for your new work bench.

Oxygen hose attached with proper fitting to the oxy concentrator.

Next, attach your oxygen concentrator to the oxy line. Use a proper fitting or hose clamps to secure the fitting. Attach your torch to the appropriate hoses (oxygen is always green).

NOTE: From the shut off, hook your line. Keep some extra flexible gas line in case you want to move your work bench in the future. The pipefitter that I hired did not leave any extra line so if I want to swap out torches for metal work, I do not have much room.

  

Additionally, venting your work area is extremely important when working with a torch, misc adhesives and/or paints etc. I didn't realize that my work space in the basement polluted air throughout the entire house until I set a hot glass rod on a small piece of paper and singed it. The odor was so minuscule and yet my husband came down (from the bedroom on the second floor) to see if everything was alright. That's when I finally got serious about putting in a vent. 
This is what I did:
 
I went to our local ReStore (Habitat for Humanity), looked for a range exhaust fan that had potential to blow out the top or back (not only from the front, because those are fairly useless IMO).  This is revealed by punch-out plates on the metal. I wanted one with a light and possible blower range (hi-lo). They were all under $15. None very pretty, but I had probably fifteen to choose from. 

Misc coat-hanger wire and chain to support the hanging exhaust fan.

I looped wire coat hangers through some existing screw holes and hung the fan to the floor joists above my work area. I grabbed an old lamp cord and wired the fan to the cord. (The fan can be hard wired to a fuse but I connected it to a plug instead.)

Exhaust hood adapter, from square to dryer hose.

View of flexible dryer hose to the exterior wall.

Also, grabbed a piece of ducting that attaches to the hood. It cost $3 but was 6" (too large) so I then visited Menard's and bought the dryer installation kit (exterior vent and flexible hose with clamps) $21 at that time.

 At home, I drilled a 1/4" hole in the exterior wall of the house (I am lucky that between the house foundation cinder blocks and floor joists I had enough room for me to run the 4" dryer hose.  I used the jig saw to cut out a square hole for the vent hose.  Then, I installed the vent in a matter of minutes, problem-free. 

I tapped out the metal sheet at top of the exhaust fan and connected my duct. (The only reason I had to do this was because the previous owner of this system had the vent installed differently.)

Dryer vent, looking down into the opened vent.

Dryer vent, exterior.

View of the installed exhaust hood.

Voila! Fairly straight-forward installs and I have a great studio for both lampwork and jewelry. (I can also mix my lye/water for soapmaking under the vent.) 

Minor Torch is firmly clamped to work station.

Be certain to clamp down your torch to the work bench! I added a piece of stainless steel on the desktop to avoid burns on the work surface from exploding rods. 

My natural gas work station - notice how short my gas lines are?

Jewelers kiln with bead door for annealing my lampwork.

I have my jeweler's kiln behind my work station to anneal my beads. 

NOTE: Natural gas has only about a 3-4 psi of pressure to your home which will limit your choice of torch. It's my understanding that only small torches will run on home-installed natural gas lines. Propane burns hotter and also is under more pressure, so you can burn a larger torch but that defeats the purpose of this tutorial. If you have a larger torch, you may look up THIS stream of posting for more info. I will tell you right now, that i noticed an immediate difference of the size of bead I could make with the natural gas as compared to my propane/oxygen tank set up. When I make beads over 2" in length, they crack before or after annealing. That may improve with experience, but there is definitely a learning curve going from propane to natural gas.  When finished using your torch, always bleed your lines and shut of the gas from the shut-off point, not only at the torch.