Kiln Test Complete and Working!

Thought I'd give an update. According to the Skutt manufacturer the other day, he had Chris do some various test on the kiln and we found out the elements were good but the relays were not. So we went and bought 3 new ones. Test fired it last night and I took notes at each segment. The temps exceeded the required amounts each time by only a few degrees. Started at 5:15 and the kiln had reached it's 04 cone temp by 12:27 at 1947 degrees and shut off.

The kiln was not cool enough to lift the lid until around 8pm tonight. It took quite a while for it to cool down, so when it got to around 140 degrees I opened the lid. Of course if there was ware in there, I wouldn't have opened it.

So I went out with my video camera and did a video of the cones in the kiln to see if they coned out at 04 temps and sure enough they did.

Here is the cone on the top shelf

Here is the cone from the middle shelf... and OOPS... I forgot to kiln wash this piece of furniture!

Lesson learned... "don't put anything on top of the furniture unless it's kiln washed first. Well Duh!

And here is the cone on the bottom shelf

And here is all 3 of the cones together

 

For those of you who know anything about testing a kiln, you know you start with one cone lower than the temp you are firing to, and one cone higher. So if you are doing a bisque 04 firing, you would put in a cone 03 for the guide cone which tells you to watch for the firing cone (04) to bend and a 05 cone to make sure it doesn't over fire. Well, my supplier says Ort is in the business of selling cones and really all I needed to do was to put in 3 04 cones to test the temps in the top, middle and bottoms sections of the kiln. I do believe my kiln has passed for the 04 test. From what I am told, it should be at least in 2:00 position. I'm still not absolutely positive on the middle on which is bent over... because it's mounted on the furniture. This tells me that it could have been a blob on my kiln shelf, which of course wouldn't have stuck since there is kiln wash on the shelf. But... the cone could have been in an overly melted stage. I'll test again, but next time it's going to be with the kiln loaded.. and I'm sure things will be just a little different in there.

Thanks for stopping by to see the results of my kiln.

I'll have a video of this as well, shortly on my YouTube channel.

In case you don't have that address it's Muditsallabout