neilestrick

Paragon Kilns serviced these kilns for years. They should be ale to give you instructions and/or a a manual.

I once had a very small studio (120 square feet) in the back of my garage. I insulated it fairly well, and could get it up to 80 degrees with a little ceramic space heater. I loved that little studio. My current studio has a hanging shop heater, and it's pretty loud when it runs. It's nice to stand in the blast zone, though! The studio is really pretty chilly, though, because it has an overhead door that is drafty. I have to keep the thermostat at about 67 degrees or the heater runs a lot, which gets expensive. My students have learned to dress warmly for pottery class.

I've been throwing for 26 years, and I'm still getting better.

I think that what you get out of school is what you put into it. I know several people who came out of the same programs as me with little to show for it, and others who came out ready to take on the world. I found college and grad school to be a place of a million possibilities. It's where I learned to make pots, and where I learned a ton of technical knowledge that set me on the path toward a career in ceramics. In college and grad school I had far more clay and glaze materials available for testing than I could ever have in my private studio. I had kilns of every type available. I had the knowledge of dozens of other students who had come from other programs. There was no surrendering of free will, self-fulfillment, or creativity. In fact I would say there is far more creativity because a college program has far more resources and knowledge available, which allow you to work in directions you wouldn't be able to do on your own, or didn't even know existed. I had teachers that demanded and supported creativity and experimentation. If I didn't show up to the weekly critiques with something creative I was in trouble. In ceramics, and any art, lack of knowledge and technical skill are stifling. The more you know, the greater the possibilities. And all the non-art classes that I took? Those come in very handy too. Calculus, sociology, biology, writing, Spanish, music, economics, etc. They are all helpful to me as a business owner, husband, parent, and teacher. You can't live in an art bubble. A college program also has a much faster learning curve, because there is a schedule that must be followed in order to get the grade. You either practice and learn the skill, or your grade suffers. An art center program doesn't have that kind of schedule, so the learning curve is much, much slower. Are you really 'wasting tons of cash and years of your life' if you get more skills in half the time? The whole purpose of an MFA program is to create a body of work that can then be produced and sold when you get out of school. I don't see how that is a waste of time or money. It's not any cheaper to learn to make pots at an art center than at a college. Say you take a class at a local art center or studio and it costs $150 a month (which is a little low in many places), that's $1800 a year if you go all year. In that class, you're going to learn, at most, 1/2 of what you would in a decent college program (if even that). I know this because I teach community classes. When people only come into the studio once or twice a week, it takes a lot longer to learn the skills, and the resources aren't there to provide a really comprehensive ceramics education. So if you do the math, you'd need to go 2 years, $3600, to get the equivalent education of one year of a college program. Add in the cost of clay, and in many studios also the cost of glazing and firing, and it's even more. And you probably don't get to load and fire the kilns, or mix glazes, or have formal critiques, or have the variety of kilns and raw materials available to you. Full time tuition at UW Whitewater for residents is $7,692. That's for 4 or more classes, so no more than $1923 a year per class. Yes, there are some college art programs that are very expensive, but you don't have to go to those. I went to state schools that were quite inexpensive at the time, and got a better education than my friends that went to the expensive schools. But I also worked really hard to make sure I got a good education. It wasn't just handed to me. I took advantage of all that was available to me and made sure I wasn't leaving anything out. I spent 40+ hours per week in the studio from day one, 70 hours a week in grad school. I helped our lab tech with all of his maintenance jobs. I learned how to fire every kiln. I built kilns. I ran thousands of glaze tests. Not all schools are the same, not all schools are good, and not all schools are a good fit for every person. You have to do your research and figure out what's best for you. I'm sorry if you've had a bad experience with formal education, but to say that all college is bad is inaccurate.

Are you sure the kiln is model P, or is that the model of the sitter? There should be a serial plate on the kiln that says model, voltage, phase, etc. There is little to no information about Nova kilns on the internet. Someone on the forum had one a couple of years ago, and it was a funky little thing with elements embedded in the fiber walls. My general recommendation is to avoid kilns that are no longer made unless you're sure you can get parts for them.

If the kiln doesn't have a downdraft vent attached, keep the top peep open throughout the firing. You really don't need to prop the lid. Make sure everything is dry before firing. No need to warm up the kiln before loading. Keep the lid closed after firing until it's cooled down below 250F. If you have a teacher that would let you help load and fire his/her kiln a couple times that would be good.

You need small cones or bars, for whatever cone you're firing to. Most folks bisque to cone 04, then you'll glaze to whatever cone your clay matures at. Your clay and glaze should mature at the same temp. In electric kilns, that generally means either cone 04/05 or cone 5/6. To use the cone, lift the weight on the sitter, push down the claw that holds the weight, then place the cone inside the kiln on the two bars in the sitter, with the rod sitting on top of the cone. That rod is connected to the claw on the outside. When the cone bends, the rod goes down, the claw goes up and releases the weight which hits the switch that shuts off the kiln. Have the number on the cone face toward the inside of the kiln, so you can see it. The timer on the sitter should be set to about 20 minutes longer than the firing is expected to take. It is just a countdown timer, it does not control how long the firing takes. So you'll need to do a bisque and glaze firing to figure out how long the firing will take and set the time accordingly. For the first firing just set it to 12 hours and do the math afterwards. You need a new cone for every firing. Witness cones are not necessary once you have the sitter calibrated. You may want to use them for the first couple of firings to make sure everything is good.

I went to grad school with Boomer Moore, who doesn't necessarily make toys, but makes pots that look like toys: Fun stuff!

Yep, talk to speedball. However, the thing with wheels is that the parts that would need to be replaced- electronics, belts, motors, most bearings, etc., are not specific to wheels. They are standard parts that can be found elsewhere.

I've got a very busy week ahead of me. I currently have 101 pots under plastic that I will have to start trimming and decorating tomorrow, including 2/3 of a dinnerware set, a bunch of mugs, cups, tumblers, oil bottles, and soap pump bottles. I've got a show on Saturday, so my goal is to have it all done by lunchtime Friday so I'm ready to fire for the next show, when I'll need all of this work. Wish me luck!

I've always hated that name 'clotted cream'. I don't want to eat anything that's clotted. Sour cream, however, sounds delicious! Go figure.

When you have a cylinder that is open on the bottom, as it tries to shrink it will catch on the shelf and warp. By putting a slab under it, the slab will shrink with the cylinder, allowing the cylinder to shrink freely. I've even had tall foot rings on large bowls warp.

@GEP Definitely on a waster. Otherwise that foot's gonna warp.

I love trimming on kick wheels. I totally miss that, haven't had a kick wheel for 10 years.

Busy day glazing today! These are all waxed and ready to dip.

I'm with Callie- why the iron? There should be plenty of CO produced by the charcoal. Iron is sometimes used in copper red glazes (although tin is much more common) to provide a nucleus for the growth of the red crystals. I'm not sure how it would affect the glaze by being in the saggar, though. Plus it'll goober up the bottom of your saggar, which should otherwise last for many firings. I would run the same test without the iron and see if there's a noticeable difference.

In my studio, 266 likes to bloat at cone 6, so we fire it to cone 5. What cone are you firing to?

Pretty sure that's an Evenheat brand kiln. Good kilns. I used to have one just like it but only 18" tall. I used it for many years. The down side of this kiln is that is only has on-off switches for each element, so it's difficult to fire slowly. It works, though, it's just not as forgiving as kilns with low-med-high switches. It's a good candidate to hook up to an external digital controller. The bricks are in great condition, so that's good. I think Marcia is right, about $200 with furniture.

You'll need a phone app that can resize the pictures for you. You only need them to be about 8x8 at 72dpi.

There is no age limit. Kiln bricks can sit for a hundred years and still be good as new as long as they have stayed dry. If the bricks look good and aren't turning yellow or dark- which happens when they've been fired a bunch- then they're good. The wiring can get brittle over time, but that's cheap to replace. The contacts on the sitter itself can also corrode, but you can always pull it apart and clean it up. I've worked on kilns that have been fired weekly for 40+ years that are still good.

You only need to cool down to approximately 1450F. Beyond that there's no real benefit. If I were doing it, I would try to estimate the cooling cycle of the gas kiln with the electric kiln controller. You could probably get similar results with only 2 or 3 cooling steps.

I am in no way trying to dismiss this method. I apologize if you feel that way. High Bridge noted that he was having different results on his flat tiles vs his vertical tiles, and I made a comment pertaining to that issue. But when you responded that you "haven't seen much difference" between flat and vertical tiles, I felt that will lead people who are not very experienced with glaze testing to think that is the norm, which I feel it is not. And that is my point, nothing more. You asked me to give examples supporting that point, which I did. To then claim those examples do not pertain to the definition of a Currie test does not make them invalid. Glazes do behave very differently depending on whether or not they are fired vertically or flat, and I feel flat tiles are very limiting in how much information they give about a glaze. I studied Curries method in grad school, and I have used it off on on for the past 20 years, and I think it is very worthwhile. I apologize if you got any other impression form my comments. But even if I did not think it was worthwhile, or if I had ideas on how it could be improved (which I do), this is a public forum and it is important that anyone be able to add to the conversation, whether it fits your definition of what you think the thread should be or not.

How much a glaze behaves on a vertical surface is a HUGE issue. It determines how it will break on texture, how it will behave with other glazes, how it must be applied, how much underglazes will bleed, where in the flow that crystals form, variations in mattness/glossiness, milkiness due to thickness, etc, etc, etc. Respectfully, to say that there's little to no difference between vertical and flat tests is inaccurate. I get what you're working on here, but I think that a lot of it of it is simply academic, because until you put the glaze on a vertical surface you're just guessing as to whether or not it will actually work for you. I don't agree that you'll get more accurate results because the grid puts the tiles all very close together. It's not hard to fit 35 tiles close together on one shelf, even in a small kiln. In regards to wasting materials because the flat grid uses small amounts, yes, that's true. But I think that running tests on tiles that you know aren't going to produce anything useable, like all flux, or little to know alumina or silica, is just as big a waste. My point is that the Currie grid can be quite flexible. It can be used for color tests, or for adjusting the fluxes or alumina or silica for a specific glaze, or for creating glazes from scratch. I get that you're using it just as Currie defines it, but that's not set in stone.

You'll get different results on flat tiles compared to vertical tiles. They're probably both melting fine, but many glazes behave radically different depending on whether they are puddling flat or allowed to flow. If you plan to make pots, then I would run your tests on vertical tiles so that you get a real sense of just how fluid the glazes really are. There's no sense wasting time with flat tiles if you're not going to use your glazes in that way in the end.