neilestrick
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Posts posted by neilestrick
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If you have access to them, you could also just use a commercial underglaze and get the same effect. They come in a million colors and are already fluxed out.
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That's a rare wheel!
I have no info, but have you tried just thumping it with a dead blow mallet to get it to seat?
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I agree with Callie, I'd be really surprised if it didn't warp. 14" is a long slab and needs more support to keep it from moving. I don't think a different clay body is going to help much nearly as much as improving the engineering of the piece. Add more feet, curve the sides, make it thicker, add a lip to the walls, etc.
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2 hours ago, bny said:
Carnival Papers (UK) offer a wet strength tissue used by hobbyists for something called "willow lanterns". It is 17 gsm thin, has remarkable wet strength and a smooth surface, and peels cleanly, but it is difficult to get a good transfer (ink wants to stay on the paper)
Do you roll it with a brayer? That seems to be the key with the rice paper I've been testing.
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@Art By Iggy If it's only pulling 15 amps instead of 30 then half the kiln isn't working, that means you either have a dead relay or a dead element (wired in series, if one goes out they both do). Have you tested the elements for continuity? Have you confirmed that the relays are working? If you're not comfortable doing live tests inside the control box, then put a little piece of paper on each element and start the kiln and see if they smolder.
Where are you measuring the amperage draw- from the circuit box or in the kiln control box?
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It's totally normal. The stand will rust a bit over time since it's not stainless steel. Also, there are steel plates underneath the body bands by the hinge and handles to give the screws something secure to grab onto, and they will rust over time. It's not from the humidity in the environment, it's the moisture in the kiln that burns out during firings. No worries. Nothing you can do besides vacuum up the rust. I've got an L&L e18T-3 with 2,200 firings and it has finally reached the point where I'm thinking about replacing the hinge (different hinge than on your kiln, not stainless).
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Those are by far my least favorite kilns to work on. Amaco still shows elements for it on the website. The big question is whether or not it's worth putting money into a kiln that old. Open it up and see how the bricks look If they're pretty beat up then I wouldn't mess with it. Usually replacing wall bricks is impossible because all the framing is too rusted to get apart. Also see if the lid bricks are still secure in the lid. They tend to come loose from the lid frame over time. Also check out the wiring in the control box. If it's the original wiring then you'll want to replace it if it's brittle or if it's the old waxy cloth wrapped wiring.
If you do decide to replace the elements, be prepared to have a difficult time getting the old ones out. Amaco made the element grooves very narrow. Combined with the fact that element coils expand as they age, the old elements will probably not come out without a fight. In order to avoid breaking the element grooves, you'll want to pull the elements upward as you pull them out. They'll chew up the top edge of the groove, but that's okay and won't hurt anything. Breaking out the bottom of the groove is a problem.
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Can you post a picture, top and bottom? The feet are probably the biggest culprit, but any time you have long flat sides like that they're going to warp. On solution is to put a slight curve in the sides, which makes them less likely to bow inward.
Any clay body that vitrifies is going to want to warp in the firing. The lower the absorption, the closer the clay is getting to its melting point and the softer it gets at the peak of the firing. Have you tried firing them on a waster slab? I wold also try going thicker as they get larger.
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Warping during construction or during firing?
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It's the breaker. Change it out to a 60 amp, and make sure the wiring is appropriate for 60 amps. Since your kiln is running on 220 volts, it's actually pulling closer to 48 amps. The elements are wound to work with your specific service voltage, so with elements wound for 208 volts it pulls more amperage on 220.
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On 3/11/2023 at 8:43 PM, DirtRoads said:
"are just not cut out for the "actual WORK" side of things ." A pottery business is a lot of WORK.
I don't think that 'work' in itself is the issue. Rather, it's the type of work. Some people can work for hours and hours with spreadsheets on a computer and have no problem with it. Some folks install shingles all day or frame houses. Some teach kids. I can work hard all day in the studio but I would hate other jobs. It's a matter of finding the work that you enjoy, and if you're not totally into clay then it's not going to be work you want to do all day.
- Pyewackette, Pres, DirtRoads and 1 other
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Hi @Daniel Molina, welcome to the forum!
By 50 amp relay do you mean the 50 amp circuit breaker in the building's electrical panel? Your 45 amp kiln should be on a 60 amp breaker, so that may be the problem. How long does the kiln run before the breaker trips off? If it's instantly, then something is not hooked up correctly in the kiln control box. If it runs for a short while then it's the breaker.
What voltage is your electrical service? Can you post a picture of the kiln serial plate?
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I spent a couple of hours yesterday morning running some screen printing tests. I'm using a 110 mesh screen, Speedball underglazes, and raw Xuan paper. My findings:
- Speedball underglazes come fairly thick in the bottle, so with no modification they actually print pretty well for 1-2 prints. However, by the third print the underglaze would stop going through the screen and it would just print water. The thicker the underglaze the worse it got. If I washed off and dried the screen, then it would print again. I think the underglaze must be sealing up the screen.
- I don't have any guar gum or dextrin in the studio, but I do have CMC gum and Veegum T, which together are fabulous for suspending glazes and making them brushable. Typically I would make a syrup out of them, but I didn't want to add too much water to the underglaze so I mixed it up like thick snot- 2 tablespoons of CMC and 1 tablespoon of VGT to 1 1/2 pints of hot water (normally would use 1 gallon of water). Let it soak (overnight if you have time), and mix it with a stick blender.
I added 1 teaspoon of the snot to a pint of underglaze and ran a dozen prints without any problems. I also thinned out the underglazes a bit and was much happier with the thickness on the paper. No need to let them stiffen up at all. In fact, Speedball underglazes are a bit too thick in the bottle. I'd seen people say it should thicken up to a toothpaste consistency, but I didn't find that to be necessary or desirable.
- I was concerned that the CMC gum would make it more difficult to transfer, since in a typical application the gum makes the underglaze hard and resists water (which is why I always recommend applying underglazes to leather hard and bisque firing before glazing if you're working with dipping glazes). With the transfers they worked much, much better with the added gum. Great release from the paper. I lay the transfer on the leather hard pot, dab it with a wet sponge, then lightly roll it with a little brayer. I'm doing some bold patterns, not thin line work, so it's easy to control how complete the image transfers by how long I leave the transfer on the pot.
- The raw Xuan paper is very fragile when wet. You have to be very careful about rubbing it when it's sitting wet on the pot. I've got some half raw coming and I'll see if that holds up better.
EDIT: Forgot to add- I have tried making the transfers with newsprint before, but I don't like how much the paper wrinkles as it dries. The underglaze was also more likely to flake off when dry. I'll try it again with the new gum-added version later this week and see if it behaves any better. The good thing about the newsprint is that it's much more durable than the Xuan paper.
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On the topic of your body being able to do the work: There's a very real possibility that one's business model will have to change (or even stop) well before you reach retirement age. I am at a point in my career where that is happening to me. I'm 51 years old, and after 30 years of making pots my hands hurt way too much to continue wheel throwing. It's nothing that surgery can fix for the most part, and I want to be able to use my hands when I retire some day, so I am now a hand builder! If I was making my living 100% from making pots, that would be a severe change in my production output and my business may or may not be able to survive that kind of change. Luckily for me, selling pots is only one of 4 income streams I have. That said, kiln repair work is also really hard on my body and I'm starting to see signs that I will probably have to stop doing it well before retirement age. None of this was an issue when I was 40, I'm just worn out. Once it starts happening it seems to build quickly, so you have to plan ahead for those changes. There's a reason you don't see many 64 year old guys framing houses or installing roof shingles.
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The switch is probably not specific to the wheel, so take it off and do a google search for the part number on it.
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5 minutes ago, Pyewackette said:
@graybeard So Graybeard, can you tell me how long your bat pins are? I find myself in the market for longer bat pins for that wheel (it doesn't have any) and I couldn't get a really good measurement this afternoon. The bat pins from the other wheels were too short, that's for sure! I'm guessing somewhere between 1.5" and 1.75"? I'm having trouble finding anything longer than inch and a quarter. I swear I saw some on either Sheffield or Bailey that were longer but I can't find them again.
You can get bat pins in any length at Ace Hardware or any store that carries a decent selection of nuts and bolts. They're called hex cap screws or socket head cap screws. You need 1/4-20 size in whatever length.
- Pyewackette, Hulk and Rae Reich
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3 hours ago, Bill Kielb said:
Nice work! Just to pass along if you ever find the need, heatsink USA was always a good resource for low cost heatsinks of decent size. Always have been able to design these to run in 90 degree ambient - no fan but takes a bit of heatsink to do it while not breaking the bank.
Thanks for the link! I can't remember where I got the heat sink I'm using. I've got a 50 amp SSR and 10 gauge wiring in the box so nothing is having to work very hard to run the 13 amps. It's been a nice little system.
3 hours ago, Dick White said:Nice job, been there done that too. Some years ago I acquired a little Paragon 1193 of about the same size, and also 120V, 19 amps. I thought it would be a nice test kiln. Not so, the elements kept wearing too fast at cone 6, despite it nominally being a cone 10-capable kiln.
Yeah, this kiln replaced a little Paragon that I'd been using for years. The element life wasn't great, plus the bricks were getting pretty worn out or I would have just rewired it. I was lucky to get the Evenheat at an estate sale where I was buying a 7 cubic foot Evenheat. The big kiln was in the basement, which was a little bit of a hoarder situation but they had already cleaned out a lot of it. While digging through all the kiln stuff I found a couple of small kiln shelves that would fit a test kiln. I asked if there were any other kilns in the house and they guy said no, but while I was moving stuff out to my truck he found the little one buried in a corner. I offered him $100 and he took it!
I just took a peek at the firing, and at 2000F degrees and a rate of 325F/hr the kiln was at 71% duty cycle. Plenty of power!
- Rae Reich and Bill Kielb
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I picked up a little Evenheat test kiln last Fall and finally got around to getting it up and running this week. It was in brand new condition, only fired a handful of times to low fire temps, but it was a cone 8 kiln, not ideal for all the cone 6 firings I'll be doing in it. So I talked with Euclids and had them make me some custom elements that bumped it up from 2000 watts to 2700 watts, a 35% increase in power. It should have great element life now. It was originally set up for 120V service at 17 amps, and with the new elements it's set up for 208V 1P service at 13 amps (wired in series). I gutted the control box, removing the Kiln Sitter and wiring, and installed a terminal block that connects the elements directly to the power cord. I don't need the sitter since I'm using a wall mounted digital controller. The controller has a Genesis Mini controller and a solid state relay- you can see the heat sink on the left side of the control box. I've been using this box for a few years now and it works great. It was originally an Orton Auto-Fire, but I modified it a couple of years ago to work with the SSR. I also put the thermocouple in a protection tube.
I had a successful bisque firing yesterday, and I'm running a cone 6 glaze firing today. I don't expect any problems, but it's still a bit stressful since it's a new setup. Fingers crossed!
- Bill Kielb, Rae Reich, Hulk and 2 others
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I finally got a couple of pieces made with the new 630 glaze fired, and they look great! The new formula is a little warmer in color than the old. A little more creamy rather than gray. The glazes look great, I really have no complaints at all. In fact, overall I'd say the new formula is wonderful, possibly even better than the old one.
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@Morgan I noticed the color change in 365, too. It's a little more orange in raw form. It reminds me of a porcelain body I used to mix that had VeeGum-T in it which made it orange. I asked if there were any changes and they said no, so it's probably just a change in one of the raw materials. It still fires out the same color.
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6 hours ago, Jo Binmore said:
Hi all, whilst I am not new to using clay in school I am new to dealing with the kilns so much. To complicte things a member of the public also uses the space for clases. Recently the kiln has caused an excessive amount of smoke/ haze wihtin the rooms during the first stage of firnig, so much so it has set off the fire alarms. This is ona bisque fire within the first 6-9 hours. The adult classes loads were mixed. I loaded yesterday with all buff clay, fully dry and set to a bisque fire. No delay: ramp1 600c @ 70c/ph. 2nd ramp to 1020c. I set t off yesterday lunchtime and when i returned to the rooms this morning there was a heavy haze. This then set of the smoke detector as I had opened the door to a room where one was located. I have no idea why this is doing it. The room was vented from firing until 9.00pm last night and then shut up but not re-opened this morning. I have never seen this much haze from a kiln any ideas would be fab
Is there a vent system for the kiln, either a downdraft vent or an overhead vent of some sort? Is there anything inside the clay that would be burning, like paper used as an armature?
Brent Model CXC slow and jerky
in Equipment Use and Repair
Posted
I've run into 4 Brent wheels in the last month that all have bad controllers. All are the black flat-panel controller that doesn't have toggles and switches- see pic below. It was a problem controller from day one and it can't be repaired, only replaced. If you have that controller there's a good chance it's the problem.
Have you brought the wheel indoors? I'm wondering if humidity is affecting the controller from being outdoors. Open up the control box and let it dry out for a couple of days and see if it works any better.
Unfortunately, all of your symptoms could be caused by a problem with the controller, motor, or pedal. The motor would be at the bottom of my list. The pedal potentiometer is $100 so not cheap to replace just for testing, but it is the most common problem.