Stogie1020 wrote:Use the glass tube first SOB...
Back in the day in college we used a lot of fused silica glass tubing (essentially 100% silica - SiO2, the purest form of glass). Why fused silica? It has essentially zero thermal coefficient of expansion/contraction. Meaning you can heat the glass up to extreme temperatures and quench it at extreme rates of cooling without it shattering.
We'd seal samples for heat treating in the tubes while pulling a vacuum on it so when we heat treated the samples, we didn't need to worry about oxidation reactions. Since it has essentially zero coefficient of expansion you could quench the sample from a white hot furnace to room temp (plop it in a bucket of water) without worry of the ampule breaking and ruining the sample (unless when you made it, you left behind a crack or an impurity in the glass).
With the glass and glass blowing equipment one might also be able to make some nice glass bongs too... if they were so inclined. Fused silica was harder to work with than borosilicate glass though. So if one were so inclined to make glass bongs and bowls I'd recommend using borosilicate glass (aka Pyrex). It's silica glass with some boron added to make it easier to work with and still have a good balance of work-ability and quench-ability.
Again, I would not encourage such behavior but that is one thing I learned... I mean one thing that someone told me about while I was in college.
