liambesaw

Sorry that doesn't exist. Maybe something like a polymer clay would be better? Fimo and Sculpey are the major brands. What is the application you're wanting to use it for?

Indeed, you're going to have to hire an electrician either way unless you already have a spare 25 amp dedicated circuit. If you are planning on buying a bigger kiln in the near future you don't want to have to pay an electrician twice (they're pricy!!). If you already have a 25 amp circuit then fire away You can always use lowfire earthenware until you're ready to buy your big cone 10 kiln, this kiln will be able to do fine with low fire.

It should have a wattage rating on the motor, can ballpark the HP from there

That's true, my wheel was not running true because it was out of level, the way the pedal is connected to the motor (cone) that hits the ring is bizarre and fascinating but is held in place by two small Allen screws. If your rk2 is off level the pedal will shift on one side over time and the cone will be hitting the ring at an angle. Levelling the rk2 and moving the tension bar to straight fixed that permanently. My three legger has been out of level from day one and I've never had a problem. Belt drive will work at any angle, have even seen a video of someone throwing on a hubcap

Yeah, especially flexible ducting slows the air down a lot, and an axial fan is high speed, low pressure so the longer the duct that is attached (and the more turns it has to make), the weaker it blows (sometimes to the point of stalling). Centrifugal fans are high pressure, low speed and are built for moving air through a duct, so while they still lose power over distance, it's far less than an axial fan. So for something like a dust collector (an actual one) or a vacuum, or anything where suction is the primary use, a centrifugal fan is the fan of choice. You just having an open elbow on it is fine and dandy, but if you put a 10 foot section of flexible ducting on it and put it down to your kiln, your 180cfm fan may now only be operating at 50cfm

I don't recommend any ducting with this type of fan (axial), you'll end up losing some significant CFM. Probably still plenty to vent a kiln but not really gonna do much for dust. Cool idea! I have an 8 inch centrifugal fan in my studio that I turn on while cleaning, it's loud but it exchanges the entire volume of my studio every 50 seconds, love that thing! Definitely not 20 bucks though! More like 60.

Like I said, I don't have issue anymore, especially since switching to my big boy. And I throw crooked every night, but when I was first starting it was an issue that magically disappeared when I leveled my shimpo. Y'all don't remember the struggle!

For an old hat yes, for someone new no.

Not really a good comparison since he's throwing at an angle too. There's a difference between doing something on purpose and chasing an annoying issue.

I had a lot more issues with level ground when I used a 4 footed wheel (shimpo rk2), but since switching to a tripod wheel I haven't really noticed. My wheel is about half an inch cockeyed, but so is my entire shed, so my chAir is cockeyed etc. And actually when I contacted shimpo about my old wheel having a head wobble, their first suggestion was to level the wheel. That worked, wobble gone. I think especially with these old cone ring drive ones it's more important than a belt drive since gravity has more of a role in the cone drive. With my new belt one, i haven't noticed any difference and my pots aren't cockeyed.

Most of the paint your own pottery places around here are just names like "five line pottery" and stuff like that. They do really well, but they also are potters and do shows, so they're constantly out there advertising their paint your own pottery business as well. I see their offers on Groupon all the time so I bet that brings in a lot of customers too. Just a thought

Well it depends. Since you're controlling input voltage, and your elements are wired in series, each is receiving a fraction of total available power, right? So if you remove half of the elements, they will receive twice as much power at the same input, creating more heat. The problem comes when you have reached the maximum input (120v @20 amps?) And it's cut in 4. So yes there's more points of heating, it will be more evenly heated, but with each element putting out a quarter of the heat. Now if you turn that down to two elements, you stop running into that false temperature ceiling because those two elements are able to run at a higher wattage. But the heating won't be as even. At least that's the way I see your problem. You're thinking only of total wattage and not wattage per element. I could be entirely wrong because I'm not an electrician or engineer, and really have almost zero experience in either, but just from a pure math problem perspective I see an oversight

Yeah. Any clay company should be able to do this for you. My supplier does custom mixes, but there are minimums. Also prepare for sticker shock, you'll probably pay their wet pugged ton rate, not the rate of buying the raw materials. You can maybe ask around at your local suppliers to see if you can work out a deal, maybe rent a mixer and pugmill and do the work yourself. You never know until you ask!

Spray the board with hydrogen peroxide to kill the spores that are all over it. Impressive that it's able to stain through the glaze fire, the mold must be concentrating metals (which is common in fungi). I'd say killing the source is the only way to really control it, but mold spores are pervasive so control is about as good as you'll get. Can you flip them every day so that the mold doesn't have that moist stagnant surface to grow into?

You'll need to make sure the wiring and circuit can handle the amperage it's going to draw. You should be able to find a nameplate on it with the specifications of the kiln. After that you should be able to type in "how to fire a manual kiln with kilnsitter" in YouTube and get a bunch of videos showing the process.