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Do You Use Cone Packs In An Electric Kiln?


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Okay, so I really pulled a goofy one this last firing. Had everything in glaze load, loaded up water smoked a bit to keep morning made cone pack from blowing up and to allow the recently glazed pots to dry up. It comes to 12 midnight, and decision time. I know it won't be anywhere near ready til early morning if I fie it to all switches(3) on ten, probably 5 am. I decided to put the bottom on 10, Mid to 9, and the top to 7. All this figuring to fire a little on all at 10 when I got up at 7. Next morning 7 out to the kiln, cone 5, 6, and 7 are down. Can't really tell how bad, but glow  is not white still yellow orange. 24 hours later, I unload and find that one teapot lid is glued on, another lid that did not get fired on the pot is glued to the shelf, but other than some darker earthier colors, all is good. Definitely a potentially bad situation came in OK, Lucky me!  

 

This got me to thinking about my cone packs, and how I am the last of a really gone breed. Still firing with cone packs in an electric kiln. Got me also to thinking that maybe someone would like to see what my cone pack looks like.

 

 

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You can see the standard fire I do in the middle, the one on the right is Wednesday nights, and the one on the left is one I made at the same time as Wednesday for the next load.

 

best,

Pres 

post-894-0-17465300-1445715609_thumb.jpg

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My dad and I fire together in his big electric kiln ... we had so many problems in the beginning with glazes being weird and pottery cracking that we now fire a full bracketed test pack on every single shelf. That's how we discovered his kiln was going to ^8 instead of ^6 and were able to adjust it. We also don't cram as much as possible into the kiln any more. ;) Lessons learned.

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I never use cone packs. If there's a problem with the firing, the controller will shut it down. If the thermocouples are out of whack, I'll see it in my glazes and having the cone packs won't matter. If I keep up on my kiln maintenance then there's never a problem. In my opinion cone packs are only needed for calibration (of thermocouples and sitters). After that you have to put some faith in the devices you've paid good money for. Kiln Sitters can fail. It happens all the time but they still work just fine 99.99% of the time. That's why they started putting backup timers on them- for that 0.01%. Having cone packs in the kiln won't do you any good unless you're actually watching them and using them as an indicator to manually shut down the kiln, but there's no reason to have a sitter if you're going to do that. Cones will tell you what happened, but they won't stop it from happening.

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Neil, that is the reason I asked, I am probably in the 1% that has no kiln setter on the kiln. And in all of my firings, I can only remember 2 overfired loads.

 

I thought some folks would find it interesting how mine are aligned perpendicular to the length of the pack so I can see all 3 cones as they drop through that little 11/2" hole.

 

 

best,

Pres

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I found your orientation interesting Pres - never seen that before. My new electric kiln - Nabertherm, doesn't have any peepholes, so cones just provide me with a check on the controller and heat work at the end of the firing, while I get my head round these things.

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My dad's kiln is 35 years old, yet brand new. It sat in someone's garage for 35 years and was never used once. We use a pyrometric bar for shutoff but we have to turn it up every hour for two hours when we start firing. We have found through the use of cone packs after firing that the bottom shelf can fire up to two cones hotter than the top shelf. So in the same load we have ^6 at the bottom, ^5 on the middle shelves, and ^4 on the top. Knowing this has changed the way we load the kiln. I have one glaze that if fired on the top shelf only fires to satin. That one goes on the bottom always. I have two others that if fired in the center and bottom boil and bubble horribly, so they must go on the top.

 

I will also add that wherever possible we fire matching sets together in the same place on the same shelf so they're all the same color and finish.

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I also fire with cone packs at all my spy holes. Every kiln load is slightly different so I can adjust a section if it is ahead of the others which I can tell by the packs.  No controller. I fire both student work which varies a lot in thickness as well as more even Open Studio work. 10 cu ft kiln @cone 6.

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Don't know how to make a cone pak, so I use SSC. I also put a cone bar in the sitter, 1 step higher that my target. And fire using a Orton AutoFire 3000 wall mount controller, for my Duncan 1029n. It's a blessing. Good results so far.

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  • 1 year later...

I never use cone packs. If there's a problem with the firing, the controller will shut it down. If the thermocouples are out of whack, I'll see it in my glazes and having the cone packs won't matter.

I recommend witness cones in every firing . . . unless you doing routine firings and can tell visually whether the ware was fired properly. If you know what the glaze will look like when over or under fired, you don't need cones.

 

Sincerely,

 

Arnold Howard

Paragon Industries, L.P., Mesquite, Texas USA

ahoward@paragonweb.com / www.paragonweb.com

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