My first kiln and first test

Wow, I can't believe it's been 5 days already since I last posted. I've been pretty busy trying to throw some bowls for the Empty Bowls project and I just finished doing some glazing on some bowls. I should be getting those back tomorrow. I am having those fired through "The Arts Council" here in town. I am in high hopes those bowls turned out. I did some really pretty designs on at least 2 of them. Anxious to see if they turned out.

I didn't mention I bought a kiln about a month ago but yes, I did. I paid 450.00 for it.  I bought it "As Is". I never seen it run but I know the furniture which came with it is so worth 450.00 I couldn't go wrong and the inside of the kiln looks brand new. Last night I sanded the shelves off lightly and applied some kiln wash to them. This protects the shelves in case any glazes run over on to them. Today I placed the shelves in the kiln and I also put a "Witness Cone" on each level of my kiln. I'm supposed to be testing them to see if the kiln is actually firing to the program I selected which is a 04 bisque. Well, those are the cones I used. I realized later I should have bought one cooler than what I was firing to, and one hotter. Oh well.... at least with 4 of these 04 cones I will at least know if the kilns heat is equally distributed around the whole kiln.

I'm anxious! We started the kiln at 4:15 this afternoon and it won't be finished until 11:00 tonight. I am just anxious to see if the kiln works properly. If so, I have a gold mine! I didn't put any of my ware in the kiln. I wanted to test it without anything being in there. This way I don't have to worry about my pieces being under fired or over fired in case something goes wrong.

Ok, I'll post again tomorrow or the early hours of the morning and let you know how it went. Oh, I made a video showing what my kiln looks like. It's on YouTube. I'll post the link later or you should be able to view it on my video bar once it comes up. My username there is Muditsallabout. That is because someone had already taken my name Muditis. I have Muditis registered though already as my domain, so I will eventually have the website up!

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