Like caring for a new baby, replacing a glass blowing crucible demands vigilance, adaptability, and a rotating schedule of frequent check-ins.

This will be a stressful week for Lumel Studios in Whitehorse as staff cool the studio’s furnace from a toasty 1,200 degrees C to room temperature over three days.

Then, they’ll replace their cracked crucible with a new one, and bring the furnace back up to its typical scorching level over another three days.

Bring down the furnace temperature too quickly, and they risk it cracking under the stress.

Bring it down too slowly, and they might have to postpone the glass blowing workshops booked for next Tuesday.

“It’s like a newborn in the house,” Luann Baker-Johnson, Lumel Studios’ owner, told the Star this morning.

“We’re going to be watching it with great care over the next six days.”

It was in December that staff first noticed a crack in their crucible – a clay bowl inside the furnace that holds molten glass, studio manager Shanta Ferguson explained today.

According to Baker-Johnson, the studio was originally planning a shut-down in late January to replace the crucible.

But when the hairline crack expanded to about a quarter-inch in width, she said, they decided to take more timely action.

On Saturday, the studio threw a glass blowing party.

Approximately 45 Yukoners joined staff over the course of the day to empty the molten glass sitting inside the crucible.

“We blew big, we were using as much glass as we possibly could to empty that crucible, making some wonderful, huge pieces,” Baker-Johnson said.

She then worked for hours the following morning to clear out a mass of glass that had spilled over from the cracked crucible into the furnace.

“I was raking and heating and pulling glass out for about three hours. It was actually exhausting work, so then I realized that ... I couldn’t do this alone.”

Baker-Johnson called her staff, who “immediately came flying in.”

Everyone worked for the next six or seven hours to clear out the rest of the spilled glass.

“It’s like we had jumped in the hot springs; it was just exhausting work.”

Baker-Johnson and her team will spend the next week cooling the furnace down, swapping the crucibles, and heating it back up.

It’s the first time since Lumel Studios opened in May 2016 that they’ve had to replace the crucible, which Baker-Johnson said one of her fellow glass blowers pointed out is quite impressive.

“We’ve had two major earthquakes and three major power outages,” she explained.

“Those can put a lot of stress on a crucible that holds 275 pounds of glass and is heated to 2,100 degrees [Fahrenheit] all the time.”

There isn’t a lot of information about the replacement process out there, according to Baker-Johnson, so they’ve had to call other glass blowers and the furnace’s manufacturer for advice, and learn on the fly.

“I think after this, I’m going to write a manual and do a YouTube video,” she said with a laugh.

A crucible’s lifespan depends on its use. A quieter studio might have to replace it every five years, Baker -Johnson noted.

As Lumel’s popularity has grown, so too has the strain on the crucible.

The studio is planning a replacement every two years, at a cost of about $900.

“We use a lot of glass, Yukoners use a lot of glass in our studio,” Baker-Johnson said. She estimated 75 pounds of glass go into the furnace every day.

Those customers whose workshops were planned for this week have been “so great” at rescheduling, she said.

While the studio will be open for retail and conversation with anyone interested in the crucible replacement process, no glass-blowing will occur until early next week.

“By next Tuesday, everything’s going to be just rosy again, and we’ll be off blowing glass,” Baker -Johnson said.