The glaze kiln is running. Most things got in. About 1/2 of the pendants got in. There’s one piece that looked already glazed, so I’m going to need a story on it before it goes into a kiln.
The glaze kiln has been unloaded.
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And in further kiln news, our repair guy will be here this Saturday to see if he can get the smaller kiln working. Hold your excitement — let’s see what he says before we get excited. It may be simple – it may be complicated. It did, after all, go POP.
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Thanks for the update!
The last class I took at Northlake they had kiln issue all the semester.
They never had more than one of the electric kilns working and I think there were
4 or 5 of them
there are not a lot of kiln repair folks
Those are usually easy. It the stuff you don’t hear when it breaks that you worry about. Fuse/fusible link or element it’s self.
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So – here’s the current news on the kiln repair:
Big kiln – thermocouple replaced and ready to go. I’ll load bisque tonight. There were a few damp pieces that I’m hoping will be dry enough by then.
Medium kiln – not quite back online. Conor spotted the issues and fixed them, but in doing that it popped something in the power cord, so he’ll be replacing that before we dare run a kiln. Probably soon – say 1-2 weeks max.
The Cress – he suggested we try a wall-mount controller that any cone-fire kiln could be plugged into. Still, the price will be over $500. It’s fireable as is, and will give folks much more experience…
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Unloaded the bisque kiln. Lots of stuff. Mostly on the main bisque shelf and the glazed shelf above it.
I’m going to run the glaze kiln tomorrow.
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Glaze kiln loaded and running. I’m planning on unloading it Thursday after Tours.
I’ll be loading a bisque kiln either Monday night or Tuesday afternoon. Things that are finished today or tomorrow should be dry in time for that.
Right now I have no estimate for the next glaze kiln. The glaze shelf is bare, as I got everything loaded. There’s lots of bisque! You could be glazing your finished bisque now! Actually, I will probably run a glaze Friday 8/25. My class folks should be here 8/24 to glaze their things, and I promise a specific time for class projects.
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Loaded up another bisque kiln. The plans are to run a glaze kiln Friday. I’ll probably load a bisque kiln after that comes out (Sunday?). There was One Too Many big and tall pieces, so it didn’t get in. I’ve got a bunch of mugs, and a few pieces that were a little too damp. Plus the disputed stuff (there was a note – I didn’t get into it).
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Started up a glaze kiln last night. Everything on the glaze shelves got in, even the 5 tall pieces. I do have some questions about how much pottery a certain fabulous artist has done (glazed without a gap at the bottom). 
Kiln has completed the heating cycle and is now cooling. Currently at about 1100F.
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Well, the glaze kiln is out. Most pieces came through beautifully. Most of the pieces that I put cookies under because they were glazed too close to the bottom worked just fine.
However. There were two pieces that don’t seem to have been made of a Cone 6 stoneware clay. They both melted onto the cookies I put under. No, the glaze didn’t run. The bowls melted, ever-so-slightly. One was red on the inside and brown on the outside. It actually still looks okay. It morphed into an oval, and the cookie is permanently stuck to the bottom, but it looks cool. The other piece, though… I’m really hoping it wasn’t our recycled, aka Free, clay. Not only did it stick to the cookie, the clay bubbled. The brown glaze they used worked fine, but the white glaze just bubbled like crazy. It looks like a baking experiment gone wrong.
So – I’m putting these on the shelf with notes. If you hear someone complaining about their pieces being melted, please direct them here to Talk, or to me at my normal spot in the Common Room.
And – if you have clay that is Cone 04 clay, or terracotta, the correct way to have it run thru a glaze kiln is to put the piece on the greenware shelves with a note that says it is a low-fire clay. Go ahead and specific what Cone your glaze says to fire to. We normally fire the bisque kiln at Cone 05, but it’s doesn’t make a big difference to the bisque to be fired at Cone 04 or 06. That’s an easy adjustment. Also, if you got a low-fire clay, you can’t use the Cone 5-6 glazes on it. At best you wind up like the brown bowl – pretty, but your form is starting to slump.
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Oh hey, I was unaware there isn’t a consistent bisque cone for community firings. It does make a difference in both how you glaze and the results. At 04 I would need to be sure to use a thick consistency glaze and it could cause problems with layering glazes, cause shivering, etc. if not adjusted. If the firing is to 06 that can cause pinholing due to outgassing. A lot of the time it won’t make a difference but it could introduce issues.
Mostly, I just need consistency (though I prefer 05, balance of strength, impurity burnout and absorbency). Do we need to mark our pieces 05 or are you firing the 04/06 marked items to 05? Let me know and I’ll make it part of the upcoming classes.
Pieces are very rarely marked anything. Usually it’s Cone 05 for the bisque. It’s just that I’m pretty sure folks put 2 low-fire pieces into the Cone 6 glaze firing because they didn’t realize that there’d be a problem. If anybody has specific requests for non-Cone 05, I won’t put your pieces in that kiln.
Not, mind you, that I’m expecting to see much in the way of marking special pieces. I had a couple of terracotta pieces, and I just put them thru at 05.
Thanks! I appreciate it. I’m still going to advocate for a consistent community firing though, otherwise people can end up with variable and/or problematic results. Or if they are trying to figure out what went wrong with a glaze, no way to know if a different bisque temp was a factor. (Did Shirley’s yellow shino run because it was 04 and thus the glaze consistency wrong? Did the midnight blue under indigo float pinhole so badly because it was 06? Maybe, maybe not, probably something else entirely, but if you don’t know what your stuff is fired at, it’s harder to figure out.)
That’d be No to both of those questions. I was trying to remember any outcomes when we had a kiln short-fire (before your time), but all my pieces were fine.
I loaded a bisque kiln. Many pieces got in. (Yes, all 5 carved yarn bowls got in.) So many pieces were big, though, that there was a fair amount of dry pieces left on the shelf. I am planning to run another bisque as soon as this one unloads (probably Wednesday PM). That shouldn’t slow down the glaze kiln for the yarn bowls overmuch.
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I forgot to leave a stilt for the big bowl. I hope to swing by DMS sometime tomorrow
Glaze won’t go in until after Thursday.
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Unloaded the bisque. However, we looked a little short for another bisque right away. @cmcooper0 – were the uncut bowls ready to be bisqued? That’d make a mostly full bisque kiln. Otherwise I’ll wait until after the next glaze kiln, which should go in Friday.
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