Roberta12

@chris123 When I dry my slab plates and trays, I put a bag of rice in the middle of them while they are drying. I do this with porcelain and stoneware.    It's just one of the small things a potter can do to try to insure a measure of success.  Along with maybe changing glazing or how you fire or or or....
What clay are you using and  what temp do you bisque and fire to?
Also, just a thought, "toss it on the wheel" going with clay has a memory situation, maybe carefully put the clay slab on the bat?
 
 
 
 

@chris123 When I dry my slab plates and trays, I put a bag of rice in the middle of them while they are drying. I do this with porcelain and stoneware.    It's just one of the small things a potter can do to try to insure a measure of success.  Along with maybe changing glazing or how you fire or or or....
What clay are you using and  what temp do you bisque and fire to?
Also, just a thought, "toss it on the wheel" going with clay has a memory situation, maybe carefully put the clay slab on the bat?
 
 
 
 

A corner might be good.  Clay is such a therapeutic way to manage all sorts of stress, life events.  As we have all witnessed the last 4 years, prices have gone up and up and up.  If you decide to go back to clay, your cost outlay would not be as steep.  I hope you can find a corner.  As @Denice suggested, maybe the slab roller?  If it takes up a lot of space?  Your life is crazy busy right now, but it will change.  We had 3 kids.   We get it.   Best of luck to you Joseph. 
Roberta 

Good to know. I might just find a corner in my garage and neatly organize everything. Still haven't decided on what to do. I dislike selling things because I am not a haggler at all and that process annoys me greatly.

In my experience, self-supporting cones can stick to the shelf if you overfire them just a little. They’re not supposed to, but it happens! As @Bill Kielb said, if you kiln wash your shelves, this is not a problem. I do not kiln wash my shelves, so I have had to chisel off some stuck cone bits. 
My solution to this is to use cone plaques, the kind that have holes in one side for holding non-self-supporting cones at the correct angle. I use the underside that doesn’t have holes, put kiln wash on that surface, and place my self-supporting cones on them. Any small piece of old or broken kiln furniture will work too.
 

Yeah, @Hulk, the more skills and knowledge you gain seems like there are more skills and knowledge YET to gain!
 
best,
Pres

Luckily there are a ton of online resources to help people do their own kiln maintenance. It's a lot less daunting than before the internet. Most of the kiln manufacturers have good online videos showing how to test, diagnose, and repair kiln issues. It's a good time to be a kiln owner!

I’m happy to say that after a couple of decades in clay, having built several  kilns and operated many more, I finally graduated into the class of “Has Successfully Replaced Elements” a couple weeks ago (I completed the “empty kiln to 04/oxidize the elements” firing, but still have to complete the final, “cone 6 glaze fire.” So, I haven’t actually gotten my diploma yet, but am confident.). 
I have earned many other (self-awarded) certificates over the years. “Scraping Shelves,” “Proper Application of Kiln Wash,” and “The Economy of Angle Grinders,” were earned concurrently over time. “Low Fire Clay in a High Firing” was a crash course. There’s a lot more fuel kiln stuff rattling around in my head than electric. 
I feel like most of what I’ve learned about kiln maintenance, operation, and repair has been so incremental it’s hard to place myself on a scale. The thermocouple goes out and you learn how to replace it, you don’t have to learn that now. Multiply that by kiln-life experiences and you wind up knowing a lot that most people don’t. We end up being experts by just making things work day after day, year after year. 

Good question.  I have 1000 firings on my L&L.  My husband and I work together on it,  Mostly I could do it myself, replacing elements, thermocouples, wiring etc.  But it is nice to have the help.  We have even replaced bricks (yes, the one on the bottom ring).  And patched bricks.  I helped a friend replace bricks and elements on a larger, older L&L.  But I have never attempted repair on other brands.  Not sure if there would be a lot of difference or not.  We are hours away from any sort of help, so we had to do this on our own.  L&L has GREAT over the phone, email, support.  My hat is off to Rob Battey.  He patiently listens to my kiln problems and gives such down to earth sensible advice. Over the phone, and via email.  I really appreciate L&L. They have made it possible for me to keep my kiln running.  

Another thing that works for rims instead of a piece of chamois is the microfibre cleaning cloth that comes with eye glasses. They last a long time and don't go slimy at all.
Wire coat hanger corners to make callipers. 
 
 

Nestle 

So the metal rod is the stem? First you'll need to decide what size rod you're going to use. Then when you make the flower, make a short hollow stem at the bottom of the flower that the rod will slide into. Make it big enough to allow for shrinkage of the clay. Make the stem a couple inches deep, and thick enough to support the weight of the flower. Then after firing you can glue the rod into the pocket using marine epoxy.

I appreciate the info that L&L has good customer service.   I haven't had mine for a year yet,  I only have 15 firings on it.   I use my other smaller kilns more because I can't wait to fill the L&L.  At my age I don't think I am going to get better at waiting.   Denice

Good question.  I have 1000 firings on my L&L.  My husband and I work together on it,  Mostly I could do it myself, replacing elements, thermocouples, wiring etc.  But it is nice to have the help.  We have even replaced bricks (yes, the one on the bottom ring).  And patched bricks.  I helped a friend replace bricks and elements on a larger, older L&L.  But I have never attempted repair on other brands.  Not sure if there would be a lot of difference or not.  We are hours away from any sort of help, so we had to do this on our own.  L&L has GREAT over the phone, email, support.  My hat is off to Rob Battey.  He patiently listens to my kiln problems and gives such down to earth sensible advice. Over the phone, and via email.  I really appreciate L&L. They have made it possible for me to keep my kiln running.  

In all the years I had to transport work for firing, I found the best fix was to have small sealable sandwich bags of glazes to do touchups when you got there. 

He claims to not contact him on Facebook but he was non responsive on email after payment (over a year ago) so I sent him just a couple of DMs on Facebook and oddly he replied. He sounds fine and is obviously working. Maybe something happened before but I do not want to speculate. What I can say is a few big social following potters dropped his name almost daily which certainly probably overwhelmed him with orders. Time will tell and I am going to be optimistic I get my replacement tools but when is anyone’s guess.

Well at this point you may be right but I am trying to be nice to a man in his 80s, could have who knows what health issues going on, and overwhelmed with a backlog of orders. Yes, at this point I am taking the polite hat off now that we know a bit more, but I figured that would be my initial approach. 

That's a cone 05, not 5. That would explain why the cone 5 glazes didn't melt.

As a regular red clay user, darker clays are going to have a different effect on glazes than lighter coloured ones do. Even leaving out the possibility of oxide interactions, the dark background behind any translucent/transparent glaze is going to reflect light differently than a lighter coloured background will. If you take this effect into account and work with it rather than against, you can get much more satisfying results out of your glazes, whether they’re commercial or homebrew.
 Darker clay bodies DO work well with commercial glazes, they just don’t look the same as the sample they only show on white clay, and that’s frustrating. I have no idea why they only show samples on white clay, because there’s a huge range of clay colours out there, but here we are.
As a general rule, yes, if you’re using brush on commercial glazes, you will have to add more layers over a darker clay for best results. You’ll need the extra pigmentation to overcome that aforementioned dark background. Even on light coloured clays, a too-thin glaze layer is gonna go that yucky green or brown. With darker clays, doubly so.
You may find that variegated glazes, or glazes with titanium or rutile will actually look much better on red/dark clays than they do on lighter lay bodies. The extra iron kicks those rutile blues into overdrive, and it’s really nice.
 If you want a result that’s closer to the samples, you probably also want to choose more opaque looking glazes, or even add a white slip over your red clay to pop certain colours. Or even use it as a way of getting 2 different effects on a piece with only one glaze.
You are not likely to get light or pastel colours to come out true on red clay, unless they’re highly pigmented or contain a lot of opacifiers. Even then, they’ll have a more tonal cast to them.

Hello!  The white spots look like the glaze is too thick.  I have had the same problem at times.  Did you put cone packs in your kiln?  That would be the best way to see if your kiln is firing to the proper temperature.  
 

Hello!  The white spots look like the glaze is too thick.  I have had the same problem at times.  Did you put cone packs in your kiln?  That would be the best way to see if your kiln is firing to the proper temperature.  
 

Hello!  The white spots look like the glaze is too thick.  I have had the same problem at times.  Did you put cone packs in your kiln?  That would be the best way to see if your kiln is firing to the proper temperature.  
 

You could empty the mixer and let the bottom dry out and get it out that way and rehydrate it again in small pieces.
welcome to tne forum

testing is the only way to know and they both need to be the same temp maturing clays for best results