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

Finally got my first glaze pieces on video

When I started this blog and my YouTube Channel I never realized how much work this was going to be. I finished putting the glaze result pics in the presentation on Monday, and then on Tuesday, I spent alot of time on YouTube searching how to take an OpenOffice Impress presentation and turn it into a video. Of course everyone wanted to sell me a program to do this. I was so frustrated by the end of the day. One piece of software was found to have a virus in it. I wasn't surprised at all, considering I don't normally download files from anyone except tucows.com or download.com. By the evening I found ONE YouTuber which was telling some basic things on saving files in PowerPoint to be able to use in Windows Movie Maker. Surprisingly, I was able to finally catch on. I'll spare all the details unless you need to know too. Then I'll be happy to make a post with the directions in it. So then once I got my files into Movie Maker, I added the music. Then I found out that the music ran out. Oh gosh... now I needed to know how to edit the sound file. I looked on the net for a free music editor and found one. I didn't spend so much time on that and you can hear the clip where I added it, but that's ok.. my brain is burned out!

So now I've got my blog up, A presentation video uploaded to YouTube and now I just need to work on one more thing.. "My databases".. showing what colors of glazes I use on my pottery so I can see the results. I'll get better at this as I go along. This took alot of my time though and I haven't thrown in a few days. I miss it so much, but this is the only way sometimes I can get done what I have to get done.

In case you haven't seen my latest video, here is the link! Click the full screen to see in HD format!
In the Beginning of Muditis

I know my ceramics look like a kindergarten, but that's ok, we all have to start somewhere. At least I have a record now and I can look back and see how far I have come. Hope you enjoy the video, and thanks for stopping by!