MCB

Hi Roberta - yes I have a downdraft vent so there should be good air movement going on. I turned the vent off when the firing finished thinking a slower cool would be better, but maybe that (marginally) contributed to my overfiring as well. Great to hear you’ve had better success going to cone 5 with a hold. How long do you do your hold for?

Thanks everyone for your responses. The clay and manufactured glazes I am using are rated for cone 5/6. The glazes are from clayscape, and I have read that they often fire them to cone 7, but maybe the combinations I have do better at a lower temp. It sounds like it’s a good place to start by testing a bisque 04 and glaze cone 5 and see how they fare. Thanks again!

Hello, I just got my first test pieces out of a glaze fire in a new kiln, and need some help in directing me to fix some problems. The kiln is an L&L easyfire E18S-3 with a genesis 2.0 controller. I ran a slow glaze program to cone 6, with a 1 min preheat, no hold, and no controlled cool down. I now realize the slow preset was probably slower than necessary as it took 16 hours. In the future I was thinking of running a slow-medium or medium preset glaze program. Some of my test tiles came out well, but a few were blistered or had pinholes. One of the mugs I glazed came out very blistered, which was on the top shelf. My witness cones look like it got a bit hotter in the kiln than a cone 6. The witness cone 6 on the bottom shelf was more bent than the one in the top shelf. The kiln says both zones maxed out at 2224 F. My questions are... - Do I need a thermocouple offset? If so where do I start? - Should I do a final hold? If so how long and what should I set as the maximum temperature? - Would a slow cool help with blistering? - I bisque fired to cone 06. Would bisque to 04 possibly help with blistering? Any advice is very welcome. Thank you!

Thank you everyone for your responses. I was referring to the l&l vent-sure downdraft system. Just to be safe I will hang it slightly down from the ceiling so it isn't touching anything, but good to hear it doesn't get too hot in people's experience. I appreciate the recommendation for rigid pipe, and I am planning to have a window open with a small fan going. Thanks!

Hi all, I recently renovated a shed for a home pottery studio, and am installing a new kiln that is going in my unfinished basement this week. To vent the kiln I need to run the flexible duct about 30 feet across a room to reach a window that I am outfitting the outlet to go through. The best way for me to get the duct across the room is going to be by hanging it from the ceiling. Because the basement has low ceilings I would like the duct to hang down as little as possible, but I am wary of it being close to the exposed wood studs on the ceiling. The specs of the L&L vent-a-kiln say that it does not exceed 150 degrees, but I can't find any recommendations on safety precautions on what distance it should be from possibly flammable surfaces. In your experience, is the heat from the duct anything to be worried about? This forum has been a fantastic resource for me as I built my studio. Thank you!