JohnnyK

Creative Industries manual.pdf Here is a copy of the manual...the pics are lousy but the rest of the info is good. I also have a design for a replacement splash pan...

I would cut the hole after everything is assembled. This way there is no undue stress on the piece. You can cut the hole while the clay still has some moisture in it but before it goes bone dry.

A description of the kilns would be helpful...pix too...

Full size firebricks...

I got the cart from a friend who said he got it from Harbor Freight. I modified it with handmade spindles and HF wheels. I welded up the brick frame from box tubing. The wire for the housing was purchased at Home Depot; the blanket was bought at Alpha Fired Arts (my local ceramic supplier); I made the ceramic buttons to hold the blanket in place and used some nichrome wire to hold the buttons in place. The 22" diameter kiln shelf sits on a couple of bricks inside the cage. The burner is a weed torch, also from HF. For the HH Raku It takes about 20 minutes to heat it to 1400 degrees, gradually increasing the torch output over that 20 minutes. I can get it up to temp in a shorter time, but in doing so I found hairline cracks in some of the jars...

Here are a few shots of a portable unit I made. I've just used it for firing my Horsehair Raku stuff and will be trying it out for regular Raku soon. I made it portable so I can fire it anywhere on my property but the driveway works out just fine. If you're interested in details, PM me and we can work it out...

My experience has been a 6 week Learning Exchange class where once a week we would get together and the instructor would do a demo for about 15-20 minutes and then set us loose for the rest of the 3 hour class to work on what was demoed, giving us about 15 minutes at the end of the session for clean up. Over that 6 week period we were encouraged to come into the studio and work on developing our skills whenever the store was open, which was 10AM to 6 PM, six days a week. In college, the classes were supposed to be 1 hour lecture and 2 hours lab...Depending on what was being taught, the lecture would last for 20-40 minutes and the lab (hands on working with clay, glazing, etc.)would occupy the rest of the time, leaving about 15 minutes for cleanup. That was Ceramics1. In Ceramics2, the professor said, "You should have learned the basics in Cer1. What I want you to do now is come up with 3 projects. Create a poster/story board for all 3 projects which you will describe to the class...and then DO IT! I'll be there to help if you have any questions." Then we would have 3 hours of hands on, twice a week for the rest of the semester. In the next to last class we would all display what we had done for critique by our classmates and the professor and in the final class we would have a "pot luck" party and get our grades. Smores were pretty popular since we fired up the Raku kiln to toast the marshmallows . I guess in the college class I and a couple of other students who were over 40 had a different outlook and different goals which propelled us to accomplish as much as we could over the semester, while the 18-20 year olds were primarily looking to get through the class and get a grade. Many of the youngster thought the class would be a piece of cake, but the professor short circuited that notion in the first class. Many of the youngsters would drop the class after a few sessions not believing the difficulty of the curriculum. Some of the older folks bailed too after deciding that it was not what they expected. Outlook and motivation is essential in the ceramics classes and I manages to ace all 3 of the courses I took to maintain a 4.0 average in ceramics...

The FX23C is the Cone 10 version of the B23_HC

A friend had given me a B23-HC that was very used and was rated for ^6. It was a manual kiln and I had fired it to ^6 twice which took a very long time (over 14 hours). I decided to continue using it for low-fire work and that worked out just fine for a year or so. Then I had the opportunity to pick up an FX23C that was supposedly used infrequently for $500. When I went to pick it up the owner said she was moving and getting out of ceramics. We fired it on the spot and the elements glowed, so I took her word for it that it was in good condition. The bricks were good and everything was clean. She also told me that I had to take her supply of dried up clay in boxes which would have weighed 300# wet. It is all earthenware which corroborated her telling me that she just did ^06 firings with the ^10 kiln. When I had gotten it home, I purchased an Orton Cone-Fire controller for around $550, hooked it up and am happily doing all my ^6 firings. Just recently I removed the kiln sitter to eliminate any mis-firings due to forgetting to set the timer or pushing the start button. If yours was used for glass slumping, the elements are probably not over-worked and should be in good shape. I would suggest that you fire it up on site just to make sure that the elements do heat up before you part with your $$$$. As AnnaVela says, the accessories can run up your total cost as will an electronic timer, but I think you would be ahead of the game over buying a new kiln...

Just think about where the clay came from to start...if you don't want a big white spot in your yard, just pour it into a gallon bucket and just splash it into the yard. The clay particles will filter down to the ground in the next rain or sprinkler session...

Actually I have had UPS crate 15 canvas giclées average size 20x30 for a shipment from Sacramento to Laramie, Wyoming for a museum display I had done in another life and they did a perfect job of crating the set...not just a box. I don't remember what the cost was, but the museum said that money was no object to get the pieces in perfect condition, which I'm happy to say, they got. price it out with them first and ask how they would pack it. If that's not satisfactory, go with Neil's suggestion...

Just think of the shipping charges you save just on clay!

I guess that I'm the luckiest so far...Alpha Fired Arts in Sacramento is all of about 15 minutes away in traffic. They are a multi-purpose facility that not only carries a good supply of Laguna Clay, but also a great inventory of raw glaze materials and a pretty complete array of glazes from Amaco, Duncan and Coyote. They have a studio equipped with about a dozen Brent wheels as well as a variety of kilns for firing work made by their "tenants". It is where I got my start in ceramics with a "Learning Exchange" class. They have a gallery space where local artists can display their wares and also a "Paint-your-own" space where outsiders can come in and get instruction on painting their own pieces prior to firing...They have a very knowledgeable and helpful staff too!