Location: Pittsburgh Glass Center on Penn Avenue in FriendshipFeatured guests: Heather McElwee, executive director, Will Haynes, studio manager, and Theresa Jorgensen, hot and cold glass manager3 things that surprised me:1. While the Pittsburgh Glass Center is closed to the public on Mondays, that’s when studio manager Will is preparing all their furnaces for the week ahead. He turns the furnace up to 2,400 degrees for eight hours to melt the glass down and prepare it for being blown.2. Other than an incredibly hot furnace, the other ingredient in the glass-making process is “batch.” Will pulled out a paper bag of it and poured some out so that I could better see the white powder, which looks a lot like all-purpose flour. Batch is a combination of sand, soda ash and crushed limestone along with a few other ingredients. Will throws the entire package into the furnace – bag included. In a couple hours that batch will be clear, melted glass. Pittsburgh Glass Center goes through about 1,000 pounds of glass each week.3. After completing a glass object, Theresa explained, it has to go straight into the annealer, an oven that very slowly cools down the item. If the glass paperweight we made was left outside, the paperweight’s inside would cool slower than the outside, causing it to crack.One thing that didn’t make the final cut: When the paperweight was hot, right out of the furnace, it was difficult to imagine what the final piece would look like. Here’s what our paperweights looked like after they had spent a night in the annealer:Photo by Boaz Frankel.Additional info: You can sign up for classes at the Pittsburgh Glass Center on their website.Want more Yinzer Backstage Pass? Check out our visit to Donora where we toured a concrete house.The post Where to find a 2,400-degree oven in Pittsburgh appeared first on NEXTpittsburgh.