Best Laid Plans

I planned to glaze fire another kiln today, and worked hard to get it all ready this morning. Packing a kiln can be tricky, and even more so because the pots I had left to fire were wide and so didn't fit well between the shelf support posts. But after an hour of futzing around, I got it all in, and tried to turn it on. It didn't want to turn on. I wondered if somehow I had tripped a breaker in the panel so I went to check, and that is when I realized that we only had one 50 amp breaker, and it was connected to the other kiln that I used on Friday.
I knew I couldn't use both kilns at once, but I thought it was because there was insufficient power to do this. I was unaware that it was because we can't wire both up at the same time. Ooops. My electrical specialist (aka the Sweetie) is in marking Hell right now trying to get his papers back to his students by last class tomorrow. I considered using the other kiln, but at this point I think I'll just garden instead.

Lots and Lots of Pots

We fired up the large kiln for the first time last week on Friday. I figured I had enough pots lying around waiting to be glazed that I could fill it. It was a bit scary. We we got it out of storage to have a good look, and the electrical wiring seemed a bit dodgy to me. Old, and the insulation looked cracked in places. The other one spent a few days sourcing proper sized wire and a socket to make it alright to use. The plug that came on it was undersized. Some of the kiln brick is a bit crumbly where it had been previously patched and the two lower prongs on the kiln sitter were broken off. Before we put a lot of time and effort to fix it up, I decided we should see if the elements were OK first. They all seemed to work in a test when I candled the kiln for a few hours to drive the damp out, so I loaded it up and had a go. In fact, I had more than enough pots to fill it because as you can see, I have a shortage of proper sized shelves, and so I still have some for another go which I will try to get into the mid sized kiln tomorrow.

All went well. (Read: Nothing blew up or caught fire.) The top part of the kiln was a little hotter than the bottom, and I turned the top elements off and waited an extra 20 minutes for the cone on the bottom shelf to drop before I turned the other switches off completely. With the top element off, the kiln seemed to stay at 2160 F nicely (according to the analog pyrometer) without moving up or down.

On Sunday, I tried to photograph my new pots, but I was unhappy with the results and so spent two days researching how to photograph ceramics. Here are two of the not too terrible photography attempts.
There is just so much to know isn't there? So now I'm off to make a light box, find a gradated (graduated?) background and figure out the white balance on my camera...