neilestrick
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Posts posted by neilestrick
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I highly recommend you contact the manufacturer before rewiring this. Switching between single and 3 phase will affect amperage draw, and may require new elements or wiring as a result. Without direct knowledge of this kiln we can't make any recommendations here. They can also tell you which thermocouple you need.
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3 hours ago, Fred Y said:
The Skutt Touch Screen unit is about $600.00.
The touch screen itself is about $600 as a retrofit for their old digital controller, but you would need an entire control box assembly which will cost about $1250 plus shipping. It would replace the entire cream control box on your kiln. A Skutt KMT822 box may fit your kiln, but it would probably need to be wired up like a KMT818 since your kiln has two zones and the 822 has 3. Your Kiln Sitter looks to be in very good condition other than the missing knob, so it may work just fine. Age isn't such an issue with kilns as much as usage. Yours looks to have had very little use.
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I have seen freishly glazed pieces blow up in a raku kiln. Unlike a regular electric kiln firing, the kiln heats fast enough that the pots don't have a chance to dry out before steam happens. When I used to do raku workshops, newly glazed pots were set on top of the kiln to dry out before they went into the kiln. Once the kiln was heated up from the first firing, the bricks held enough heat that the kiln would rocket up to 800F within a minute as soon as the door was closed without even turning on the burners, so pots were set into the kiln with the door open for about 10 minutes to heat up slowly at first at get that last bit of moisture out of them. We also set the pots on cold pieces of soft brick so as not to shock the bottoms, pulling out the hot ones after each firing and replacing them with cold ones.
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7 hours ago, Retxy said:
Thank you so much! Woukd you recommend a rust halting spray hust to stop/delay the corrosion?
Thank you!
I would definitely paint the outside with a good quality spray paint. The inside is going to rust no matter what if it's steel, so it's best to use it regularly so the rust doesn't build up.
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1 hour ago, Girl on Fire said:
It took 13.20 hours to complete. Does this include the 1 hour preheat?
Yes. And the 1 hour preheat actually takes about 3 hours because it takes about 2 hours to get to the preheat temperature before it starts the preheat time.
Try a cone offset of about -15 degrees for starters. You're not over by much.
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Congrats!
Flame out the top does not necessarily mean reduction. Does the clay from your cone packs look reduced?
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@Retxy How much of what we're seeing is rusted metal vs old clay? If it's all metal, then the metal is in really bad condition and I wouldn't touch it. If we're looking at a bunch of clay on the surface and the metal underneath is still decent then I think sandblasting is probably the best way to go. Do not put any sort of coatings on the auger or in the hopper. They won't survive. Just leave the interior raw. Paint the exterior if you want to.
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If I'm interpreting your drawings correctly, I think you've got it.
Don't forget you'll need a damper in the chimney, about 12-18" up from the floor. 4.5" walls would be better. Definitely soft brick.
Don't oversize the burner. That can cause a lot of problems.
Have you decided what type of gas you're going to use? Be sure to order the burner accordingly.
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37 minutes ago, Girl on Fire said:
Should I run an empty glaze fire after the first firing?
What speed do you recommend?
You can just run the empty glaze as the first firing. Medium-Slow with a 1 hour preheat.
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3 hours ago, mattb said:
this is the start of what I'm envisioning based on your sketch.
To be clear, my sketches are top view. If you're using two venturi burners have them come up from the bottom. If you're using a single power burner have it come from the side.
The bottom shelf should be an inch or so off the floor. The bag wall will need to be at least as tall as the top of the burner ports, probably a few inches above that. Trial and error indeed. It's going to force heat upwards before it can be pulled down by the flue, and protect the pots along the firebox.
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3 minutes ago, Fred Y said:
Yes! We discovered that after purchase. Local hardware store may have one that fits...
Thanks.
It's not just a knob. It's specific to the Sitter, as it has a piece on it that triggers the shutoff. Google 'kiln sitter timer knob' for sources.
- Bill Kielb, Rae Reich and Fred Y
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L&L just recently changed their recommended first firing schedule from cone 5 to cone 04. Either will work fine.
23 hours ago, Girl on Fire said:Why does L&L include 2 ^5 witness cones with new kilns if their latest video shows firing to 04 for the first firing?
Probably because they still have a bunch of cone 5's to use up. Use them when you do your first glaze firing. I'll talk to them about getting some 04's instead.
Personally, I would do an empty glaze firing (just shelves) with the 5's because if your glaze firing is running hot or cold you can ruin a lot of work.
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19 hours ago, Girl on Fire said:
Got it.
is it advisable to use 04 witness cones on this 1st firing?
thanks
Yes, if you have some.
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If you have some cones, use them bottom and top.
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2 hours ago, Girl on Fire said:
Do you know long that program takes?
From the edit screen, push the Graph button and it'll show you how long it should take.
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L&L used to recommend the slow cone 5 with 3 hour preheat, but they recently changed it to 04 with a 1 hour preheat. Whatever you do isn't going to make much of a difference in the long run. What's important is that you do some sort of firing to season the elements. Put a few shelves in the kiln when you do the test firing.
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I've been thinking about this some more. I think that if you really want to be sure that it works well, I would do smaller shelves and leave a firebox zone. There's a tendency to want to fill these kilns with as much shelving as possible, because that's how it worked when used as an electric kiln. But if you were building a gas kiln from scratch you wouldn't do it that way. While it can work with 16x16 shelves, it won't fire nearly as nicely or easily as it could/should. By using smaller shelves and leaving a firebox, it's going to fire much better, and have more options for making adjustments. Specifically, I'm thinking of the bag wall, which will undoubtedly need to be adjusted up or down, and so leaving enough space for that is important. If you go with a single burner you can bring it in from the side. If you go with two burners, bring them in from the bottom:
This design leaves room for a 5-6" wide firebox, which is really about the smallest you can functionally go. The 2.25" wide bag wall is made of regular 4.5" hard bricks cut in half. It's narrow but stable. You could increase the size of the shelf all the way to the edge of the firebox by letting it sit on a short bag wall, and then put more bag wall on top of the shelf. Then you'd have a roughly 17x14 shelf all the way up. I've built little kilns like this and they fired beautifully.
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2 minutes ago, mattb said:
creativity my friend, route a .5" deep by 1" wide slot in the floor and a 2" deep slot in each end wall for the splits to fit into. use sairset or no. 36 to mortar the entire thing into place. yes if and when the lower shelf needs to be removed and inserted it would need to be done carefully to avoid breaking anything. but hey when you have minimal space you gotta pick up every inch you can.
I would be very concerned with the splits warping, at which point the brick slots will crack and the mortar joints will fail. IFB are not strong at all. I certainly wouldn't trust them to support the kiln shelves above, although that can probably be dealt with in other ways. The firebox is the hottest point in the kiln, and the burners blasting on one side of a brick is about as uneven a heating situation as you can get in a kiln, so lots of movement there. Alpine kilns used to use a silicon carbide kiln shelf as a bag wall, notched in to the front and back walls of the kiln. They always cracked the bricks where they were notched in, at which point you had to switch to free stacked bricks, which could move as needed during expansion/contraction.
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5 minutes ago, mattb said:
looks like you beat me to the punch on the chimney question. what kind of cfm would you suggest if i were to build or just purchase a power burner? I'll most definitely be researching this probably before you answer back, but hey it feels more personal getting an answer than just reading things.
also if i move to a single burner how would you suggest my layout change for even heating?
CFM of the blower will depend on the btu output needs, but for something small like this a little 50cfm squirrel cage blower would probably work. You'll want to have a rheostat on it to slow it down. The nice thing about a power burner is you can resize the gas orifice and get a really wide range of output without making any significant changes to the setup. If you really want to make it safe, put a solenoid on the gas line and connect to it a high limit shutoff, in addition to the Baso pilot system.
This is one of a pair of burners I built a long time ago for a gas kiln I no longer have. About 450K btu each. Baso, solenoid, rheostat, high temp shutoff, timer. About as safe as I could make it with off-the-shelf parts and without getting into complex and expensive control systems. These can get pricey by the time you buy all the parts, but they work well and are quite safe.
Ward Burner Systems is a good resource for burner info.
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The size of your burner ports will depend on the size of your burner tips. The port should be about an inch wider in diameter than the burner tip. The end of the burner should be set back from the kiln wall 1/4" for every inch of burner tip diameter.
I don't know how you'll make a bag wall that's only 1" wide and stay standing. Typically the bag wall is made of hard brick, set on side, so 2-2.5" in order to be stable.
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5 hours ago, mattb said:
It might be easier to understand if a pic of the kiln was googled.
I've seen that kiln, which is why I don't think the electronics bay is suitable for the burners. It's probably too shallow to house the burners, and I don't know how you'll be able to get to them to make adjustments during the firing if they're enclosed. Plus you don't want anything to restrict air flow around the burners. I would cut out a big panel from the right side of the cabinet from kiln floor level to the top so you have a nice open space to work within. Make the chimney a full brick thick (4.5"), and put in a damper about 1/3 of the way up from the bottom.
5 hours ago, mattb said:baso valves seem to be the way to go and I will do more research before making final decisions on plumbing the burners.
Baso with a simple thermocouple and pilot light like an old school water heater will work well and be a cost-effective safety system.
5 hours ago, mattb said:I built my own n/a burners for my gas forge so I'll need to dig out my old notes and I may build my own.
Just thought- if you make a power burner (with a blower) you'd only need one, and it would also eliminate the need for a very tall chimney. The chimney height is the number one issue we see here on the forum when it comes to successfully firing converting kilns. Most of those use venturi (n/a) burners, which are cheap but require a good dose of secondary air to fire properly, which comes from a taller chimney. With a power burner the chimney doesn't need to be any taller than the top the kiln. Having the front wall of the controller cabinet would also allow for mounting a rheostat for the blower.
This kiln is a much better candidate for conversion than the majority of kilns we see here. It should work well.
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Hi @mattb, and welcome to the forum. It would help if you could draw a picture of your plans. Here are some questions I have based on my understanding of the project:
You're making it a downdraft, correct?
What is the btu output of your burners? Powered burners or venturi? Natural gas or propane?
What are you using for a safety system on the burners- Baso valve?
Why do you want to run everything through the electronics bay? Seems like a lot of hassle to work in there, and you'll be restricting airflow for the burners.
How do you plan to construct the chimney?
Use 16x16 shelves. It needs space to breathe.
You can rewire the control transformer to run the controller on 120V if you want to use the thermocouple. I'd put the thermocouple in a protection tube or it won't last long if you plan to fire in reduction.
You can put the flue opening between the burner ports. Make the flue opening equal to the total area of the burner ports. You can always damper it down.
The bottom shelf will need to be above the burner ports. Have a bag wall for each burner under the shelf. Target bricks can just be a brick leaning against the wall at the end of the firebox, or a brick set upright but turned at an angle to the burners about 2/3 of the way from the burner.
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13 minutes ago, Min said:
It does look like a crawl/reticulated glaze but I think the tricky part would be how they got it to stay on the pot on the undercut vertical surfaces.
100 Grand maybe?
Those are the best! Seriously, I want to eat that pot.
Bought new messed up kiln want it to get to life
in Equipment Use and Repair
Posted
Call them directly if you can. We only have a handful of folks in Europe who regularly participate in the forum who may have knowledge of that particular kiln. One of them may chime in, but your best bet is always the manufacturer.
As far as single 3 or phase goes, look though the wiring diagrams and see what the amperage draw is for each setup, as that will determine what size breaker you need. Follow local codes for properly sizing the breaker.
Unfortunately they didn't color code their wiring diagram, so that's going to make things more difficult.