neilestrick

If you receive the kiln and do not unbox it, then it will be safer for moving to the new house. However: 1. If you don't unbox it right away then you won't be able to make a freight claim if there's damage from the original shipment. When you finally do unbox it you'll have to deal with any damage yourself. 2. It'll need to be moved with a pallet jack or forklift if it's not unboxed. Using a pallet jack to get something onto a lift gate is difficult. It may be easier to move it to the new home yourself in an SUV or pickup, which would allow you to uncrate it when you receive it, and pack it safely in your vehicle. L&L will not hold your order for more than a week. They simply don't have room to store people's orders. If you know where you'll be moving, you could: 1. Have it shipped to a freight terminal at the new town, pick up the kiln there, and move it into a storage unit until you're ready for it. You'd need a truck that they could forklift the pallet into when you pick it up. 2. Have it shipped to a friend in the new town, who can store it in their garage for you until you move. Email me if you have other questions. Sorry you're having to go through all this.

Like I said, do a program with one ramp, rate of 9999, to your peak temp. It'll open the gas valve and leave it open until it reaches the temp. It'll read current temp as you fire, and act as a safety shutoff.

So the digital controller is cycling the gas on and off in order to achieve the rate of climb you program? Unfortunately, that won't work. Gas kilns need to have the burners on the entire time in order to maintain pressure inside the kiln, which is what will make it fire more evenly. A digital controller will only work if it's working in conjunction with a gas valve that is adjusted by the controller, and an automatic damper, too. There are 3 adjustments that have to be made when firing a gas kiln: gas, air, and damper. With Venturi burners you can usually get the air set to where it doesn't need to be adjusted, but power blowers do need adjustment as you go along. So you have to set the gas and damper to achieve the rate of climb and level of reduction you want at any point in the firing. Generally the gas is slowly increased as the firing progresses, and the damper is adjusted accordingly. You can't just set it and leave it. I recommend trying a firing where you set the rate of climb on the controller to 9999, with a set point of your peak temp, and then fire the kiln manually, making the proper adjustments to gas, air, and damper.

When you push in the power button, you're actually pushing together contact plates, which allows the power to flow from the bottom terminals on the ceramic block to the top terminals. There are two plates, one for each side of the Sitter block (left and right). Over time these plates can become corroded and need to be cleaned up. I've seen a couple of kilns over the years where power was only flowing on one side of the Sitter due to corrosion. When the Sitter kicks off, the plates disengage and the power flow stops. The back side of the power button has a small ridge in it. When you push in the button, a little spring loaded lever goes into the ridge and holds the button in. When the cone bends and the weight drops, the little bump on the weight hits the lever and it releases the button. The timer knob has a little bump on the back side that does the same thing. When it gets to zero, the bump hits the spring loaded lever and releases the power button, which disengages the contact plates. It's very much a Rube Goldberg machine IMO, but it works.

If they're firing to cone 10 in a gas kiln, then they're probably firing in a reduction atmosphere. You can't do that in the electric kiln, so the glazes won't look the same. Find a cone 6 clay body that vitrifies at cone 6, not a body listed as cone 6-10, and start testing cone 6 glazes.

A 15" Corelite shelf will fit just fine. Corelite shelves are the best compromise between price and durability. You'll need a shelf at the bottom, so don't forget to count that. I would not invest in more than 1 or 2 half shelves for a kiln that size. They're not a good use of space in a kiln that small. I rarely use a half shelf in my 18" kiln, and it's almost always just one at the top when I have a couple of tall pieces that I can fit a half shelf next to. Put your money into full shelves, and get as many as you can afford, at least 5. Get a full kit of posts, lots of sizes.

I never used Great Lakes Clay so I can't say for sure, but every clay body I've seen around here called Buff is a cone 5/6 body. To be sure you could fire a tile to cone 5/6 and test it for absorbency.

That doesn't look like the typical cement peeling. Kinda weird that it's opening up at the seams like that. Are they cracks that go all the way through? I'd fill in those cracks with cement. Any refractory cement that's rated to the max temp of your kiln will work fine. Most kiln manufacturers sell small quantities for patchwork.

The Quad elements pull the same current as the regular elements, and are wired the same (parallel on most models). It's all about the length and thickness of the element wire. The option is worth the extra cost, as it will pay for itself in the long run. With typical elements we typically see a lifespan of130-150 firings when doing bisque and cone 6. With the Quad elements we typically see a lifespan of at least 250 firings. I've seen them go 300, and I've got a customer who says they've gone 350+. Break even on the higher cost of replacement elements is about 240 firings if you're doing the work yourself. If you're paying a repair tech to do the work you'll save a lot of money since there will be fewer element changes.

Is that the firing schedule you typically use, and this sagging pot was an odd one? If so, then it's probably a thickness issue. Otherwise, it's probably over-firing. That 30 minute hold is adding heatwork equivalent to going another 1.5 cones hotter.

Do you know what cone it's rated to? If your kiln was climbing slowly, it may have over-fired if you're firing by temp instead of heat work. What was the rate of the final ramp to peak temp?

Looks like it might be slumping due to over-firing. What's the cone rating of your clay, and what cone did you fire to?

You'll also want to be insured for product liability, in case someone is ever hurt by one of your pots. And if you're selling them at art fairs, etc, then you'll want to be covered for damage there, in case your canopy ever goes flying during a wind storm.

Oops! I missed that you're in England.

State Farm typically doesn't care about kilns in the house, however since you're doing it as a home business and not just a hobby, that puts thing into a different category. However State Farm does offer business insurance, too, so I would check them out. Another option is to find a local insurance broker who can shop around for you.

You'll like underglazes then. The color in the jar is the color they'll fire to. When you layer them you'll get some bleed-through of darker colors into lighter colors, but that can add a lot of depth to the surface. They don't mix like paints- yellow and blue will not make green- but you can tweak them pretty easily using colors that are next to each other on the color wheel- blue and green to make blue-green. You can also lighten and darken them with black, white, and gray. It requires testing, though, because the color you mix won't necessarily be the same after firing because some colorants are stronger than others. For instance, blue and black tend to overpower other colors, so what looks good as a 50/50 mix before firing might need a 90/10 mix. This platter is done with Speedball underglazes, fired to cone 6 on porcelain. It looks like Scarva carries Speedball, and underglazes are compatible with most any clay body. The only thing to watch out for is if you're firing to cone 6, some colors may change. Speedball colors all hold very well, but the Royal Blue and Red tend to flux out at cone 6 and get rough. Their other blues and reds do fine. Carmine red is a nice color. Amaco Velevet underglazes are very nice, but more expensive.

I don't know what you have available, but I like Speedball underglazes, and they have a nice clear glaze, too. Amaco makes nice underglazes, too, but I see more color shifting in those when fired to cone 6. Get some small jars of whatever you have available and do some testing.

If you want to paint images like flowers and whatnot, then you want to use underglazes, not glazes. Glazes will generally run/flow where they contact each other, and any imagery you paint on will bleed and move and blur. Glazes do not require a clear glaze over them, and the clear glaze will mix with the other glaze and change how it looks. Underglazes, however, will not bleed where they contact each other, are not fluid, and have the added benefit of being the same color before and after firing so they're easy to work with. Underglazes require a glaze over them in order to be durable and food safe.

Note that this body is meant to be fired in reduction. In oxidation it's going to have different properties since the iron will behave differently.

The other concern with leaving them on the ground is if you get a freeze-thaw cycle where the ring has a puddle in it from rain or melted snow and the re-freezes. When building outdoor ceramics you need the proper clay body, but also the proper design. Outdoor sculptures have to be designed in a way that water won't puddle into crevices where it can freeze and expand and break the piece.

I'm assuming these will be set into the ground at least an inch or two? I would not leave them in the ground in the winter, as the movement of the soil as it freezes may break them. Even sitting above ground I would watch out for water puddling inside them and then freezing. I'd put them in the garage or shed over winter.

With a commercial glaze it's complicated because you don't know the formula of the gaze. So you can either fire it hotter, or add a little frit to it. 1-2% frit 3134 may be enough to get it to bleed, but you'd have to estimate the amount of glaze material if you're working with a premixed wet glaze and do a lot of testing. By adding frit you'd be voiding any food safety labeling, so you'd need to test it for durability and safety. That little bit of frit shouldn't make much of a difference, though. To make it less fluid you could add equal parts EPK and silica. Zinc free is always a good choice when working with colors.

So you're using an indoor kiln? It's pretty easy to overload a vent with smoldering sawdust....

You want to get up to red heat for the carbon trapping to work well. Too hot and it'll just burn out, though. For horsehair firing we always went up to about 1300F, which should work for this, too.

I agree. Make it easy for your customers to give you money. I had a neighbor at a show who refused to take credit cards. She only did 4-5 shows a year so she didn't want to mess with it, and said many times that the 3% fee was highway robbery. All weekend long I saw people asking if she took cards and and then walk away when she said no. She could have sold another $500 of her work for $20 in fees.