I made an enclosure for the tube furnace and hooked it up to an arduino and solid state relay. The main body of the furnace is 5″x5″x12″ and filled with alumina ceramic wool. Impressively, the exterior only reaches 100°-200°C at most even while the tube inside is over 1000°C! That should keep the furnace from being a severe fire or burn hazard. Now I just need to write a PID loop with a proper temperature ramp controller and I should be good to go!