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Underfired - how long to wait to open and restart


AnnaVela

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Had to change a tube in kiln sitter in my manual kiln and just test fired it to cone 06. It shut off after 3.5 hrs, so I assume I need to adjust the sitter and restart. How long would you wait before opening and placing a new set of cones? I don’t have a thermocouple, so can’t really measure the temperature, I rely on cones. It’s pitch black inside and it’s been couple of hours, still very warm to touch, but not burning hot.

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I would wait til the lid is warm enough to hold your hand against it.

 

There is a nice little calibration tool that comes with kiln sitters that looks like a coin with a couple holes and a notch, this is used to set the sitter to the standard tension.

It is also possible the little cone broke if you use cones, bars don't tend to have this problem.

 

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I had a huge problem with small cones, could not separate them, broke like 7-8 pairs straight from the box. The other box of cone 6 was just fine and I could easily separate them. So I’m definitely going for bars next time. I just peaked at witness cone and it seems to be bent just right, so I think it fired properly. I did use the firing gauge to install and followed the instructions to adjust everything. I thought that I need to raise a trigger on the weight a bit, but I think that everything worked properly. I was very surprised with 3-3.5 hour firing, thought it would take way longer to reach cone 06. I did fast firing though, so probably timing is correct. I will test fire it to cone 6 tomorrow to see how it goes.

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You can reach cone 06 in 3.5 hours, but you shouldn't reach cone 06 that fast.  A bisque should be slow in order to make sure all the combustibles are out of the clay body.

Next time set elements to low for a few hours, then medium for a few hours and then finally high until the sitter turns it off.

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Absolutely! I wouldn’t do it with ware inside. I wanted to test out the replaced tube assembly to check if it works properly. I plan to fire bisque 2hr on low, 2hr on med and then on high until cone melts. Although I’ve read that many do fast firing for glazed ware. What do you think? 

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Thanks! I saw this video and a few others, but I suspect that something happened during the storage, maybe some moisture issue, they were breaking in half, most of the box. The cone 5 box was totally fine and I could separate them without any problem.

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