A kiln reborn

So, the last time you heard from me was about seven months ago.  You’ve got to be asking yourself “David, what have you been doing this whole time”. Well I’ve been having some electrical issues, not only with the kiln but the house as well.  It’s always best to start at the beginning…

When I first hooked up the kiln I thought I would fire it up and see how that puppy purrs.  As soon as it started purring the plug, breaker, and all the wires connecting the kiln to the breaker box and the box to the main breaker started to get hot.  Not just warm but what seemed to me to be dangerously hot.  So I shut it down, and did a little figuring and realized that I bought a 208 volt kiln and I needed a 240 volt kiln.  So I replaced the elements and the company said that was all I needed to do to get back on track.  Once again I fired her up to see what we could do and it happened again.  My next course of action I felt was to replace the wires going to the shop from the main breaker.  I bought a larger gauge wire and ran it through the attic and felt pretty good that that would fix my problem.  But while I was messing with the main breaker I realized that the 100 amp box in the shop was run by a 50 amp breaker in the main box, so that wouldn’t work.  I looked around and was able to pick up some breakers and replace them.  I thought this would work, and it didn’t.  I gave up for a while because I just didn’t know what to do, and I was getting really frustrated.  Then we had one of our old breakers melt, luckily I was here to shut it down before it did any real damage.  We then decided to replace the main breaker and the panel in the shop, hoping that we would solve the kiln problem in the process.  After a couple of weeks and a few wasted vacation days we had our new breakers.  I was sure this would fix my kiln problems, but when I fired up the kiln the breaker still got warm.  I was crushed; I didn’t know what to do.  I started emailing tech support with loads of questions, and perused all the forums that I could find slightly related to kiln electricity and wiring.  After this research I decided to upgrade the wire to the kiln to the next size bigger and up the breaker too.  I also had my dad look at it while it was firing to see if he could see what was wrong.  What he decided was that I was over reacting and I should just let the kiln complete a firing and see what it does.  It was fine; the breaker did get warm but not hot.  My research also revealed that the breakers will get warm with a resistive load, which is what the kiln is.  Now I’ve fired one bisque firing and one crystalline test and nothing bad has happened.  So I’m going to assume that my problems have been solved and not worry about it anymore.  While I’m typing this I’m firing my second bisque load, and next weekend will be another crystalline test firing, this time with color.  It’s only be seven months but the kiln is finally up and running.  We should start seeing finished work in the next couple of weeks, so keep your eyes peeled.

A Kiln by another name would fire just as hot...

The last two weeks haven’t been that interesting just chugging along with those prayer wheels.  This came to a halt when I got to the decorating phase, I just didn’t have the materials I needed to continue.  So I posted a few videos to Facebook with the twist that I actually explain what I’m doing instead of just playing music.  I think I enjoy explaining a lot more, it feels a lot like teaching and I love to teach people about pottery.  So that was everything new until last Friday when I drove up to Paseo Pottery and bought/ordered a kiln!!! and picked up some chemicals to make glazes with.  The kiln and a few of the chemicals have to be shipped to me, but I was able to take home most of the colorants (i.e. Iron ox, manganese diox, Rutile, and Nickel carb).  This means that while I wait for my kiln to arrive I can work on finishing those prayer wheels.  I’m super excited that I will be able to have finished work within a month or two, also excited that I don’t have to use this kiln to try and glaze in anymore.  I will continue to use it for horsehair and raku firings though.  So look for finished work coming in the next month or so, I will keep you up to date on what I’m working on and how things are coming along.  Thanks for visiting!

An update and an inquiry.

Ewan has become an outside baby since the last time I posted here.  So here is the obligatory baby picture.

And now for something completely different...  I’m thinking of starting a Kickstarter to buy a kiln, and I just wanted to run a few things past my “vast” audience.  I’ve been trying to think of gifts/incentives to give out for various levels of giving.  So far I have:

5- Hand written thank you card.

10-spoon rest/tea bag holder

20- Japanese style tea bowl (chawan).

40- Two Japanese tea bowls (chawans)

50- Four large(ish) matching tumblers or tea bowls

100-four Japanese style tea bowls (chawans), honey/sugar container, and creamer container.

150-3 hour lesson where I come to you to teach hand building or throwing, or you can come to the studio.  Lessons can be for any age.

If you have any ideas for other or better incentives please let me know, I’m completely open to suggestions.  I seem to be moving fairly slowly on this front, but I would like to have a kiln set up within the year.  I think the goal for this project would be around 7,000.  I’m looking at this kiln, the Olympic DD14 Down Draft.  It’s the largest kiln I can get without needing to use a forklift.  It will cost around 7,000 after I add the shelving kit and get a larger gas meter.  Thanks for reading.

A Horse with no Mane

Keturah convinced me to throw some pots so we could do a horse hair firing.  So I threw a few 1 and 2 pound forms, it ended up being about 50 or so pots, 25 of each weight. 

Here are a few of the 2 pounders.

 

After I trimmed them I allowed them to get bone dry, and then rubbed them down with some steel wool to smooth out the rough edges.  I then rubbed them down one at a time with vegetable oil, and then burnished them with the back end of a spoon.  Here are a couple of pictures of the burnishing one static and one action shot.

 

Here’s a group shot of the first batch freshly burnished, you can see our kitchen light reflecting off of the surface of the pots.

 

Here’s a close up of one of the vases.

I then loaded the kiln to the brim with the pots, and fired the kiln up to around cone 010 (1657 f, 902 c), and then let it cool down to about 1100 f.  We then set up a station on the other kiln with a lazy susan, some kiln shelves, and a piece of fire blanket.  After the kiln reached 1100 f we began to take the pots out one by one and lay the horse hair on them, and allowed the hair burn and sizzle on the surface.

  

Here are a few photos of the hair being burned on the surface of the pots.

  

A group shot soon after we finished the last one.

  

A group shot of the pots after we washed them off.

  

After the pots dried we took some wax and polished the burnished surface to bring back some of the shine lost during the firing.  It ended up being about 23 pots that we finished this time around.

Here are a few shots of individual pots, look for these on our Etsy site in a couple of weeks.

Return of the Living Kiln

This week I’ve also been working on our other little kiln; this one is still set up as a down draft.  I took off about half the thickness of the soft brick on the walls in hopes that this will allow more airflow while firing which should allow the fuel to combust more efficiently and we might be able to reach much higher temperatures.  This is exciting because we might be able to glaze some work that has been sitting around.  I’m going to test what temperatures I can get with this kiln and the properly working burners, and then see what kinds of glazes we can make for that temperature range.

I’m also working on some large bowls that came out a few firings ago:

 

I started banding these bowls:

And next I will add some designs around the rims and a nice picture in the middle.  My idea for these bowls is to hang them on the wall, so I threw a catch on the back side so it will sit on a nail.  We’ll see how that works, but I think they will look nice hanging on a wall.