Thursday, May 14, 2009

Just a quick firing


We loaded up the electric kiln on Tuesday for a quick bisque firing yesterday.

Well- we noted that the kiln was only 800 degrees by 5:30-

We thought did we do all the turn ups?
Isn't it usually 1,000 to 1200 degrees by now- yes we thought.

Now for some paper and a pencil- we never track the eclectic kiln any more.

We noticed we were only making 140 degrees an hour.

Humm everything is on high let's push it on.

7 pm still climbing slow as molasses.

8 pm still only 140 degrees an hour.

10 pm and we have slowed to 115 degrees an hour-

at 11:30 we finally hit 1700 degrees.

We look up charts on line and fingered this was a hot cone 08.

We usually take the kiln to 1750-1756

So today along with concentrating on the upcoming wedding, we will be unloading and taking a look at reasons why the kiln decided to crawl to the finish line.

We just rebuilt this kiln last June-July- In fact just finished it a week or so before the studio fire.

So it has new wiring and has been working just fine-

something loose maybe?

Or my sister tells me Mecery is in retrograde........


3 comments:

Michael Mahan said...

I'm glad the "make-the-kiln-fire-slower" bug is over at your place now. I'm replacing my elements right now.

cookingwithgas said...

I will see if I can stomp him out so he does not infect the neighborhood!

Mike Barber said...

Maybe a burned out element. I got some clay (exploded pot in the past) on my elements and it burned right through one element in the middle of the kiln. It made it so it just couldn't reach temp.