So this morning, I wake up fully expecting to open up said kiln and find my ware all nice and toasty, ready to glaze.
Well, I did wake up. This morning I mean.
The small kiln I have is fired electronically. Also manually.
It fires electronically, but there is a mechanical safety device to shut the kiln off.
Most kilns are fired using pyrometric cones. These cones, made by the wonderful people at Orton, are designed to melt at a certain temperature. This is a cone:
Now this cone has been fired so it's white; some cones are white and some are other colors so you can tell them apart, but fired they are all white.
Like these:
These cones are all fall down, meaning the kiln reached the desired temperature.
Here are the cones I use:
The cones I use are smaller(called small cones!) for my kiln is like small.
Here is what a small cone looks like compared to a large cone:
So anyways, all day long, I'm wondering what the hell happened in happy kiln land. The ware inside looks okay, the safety device, called a kiln sitter, did not pop off meaning the kiln did not reach temperature.
Well sports fans, I have proved once again, that no matter how good you think you are, there is always someone better. Or smarter. Or in this case, I was just lame.
Lame, for my over inflated ego caused me to skim over the firing instructions, hence I got the settings on the electronic controller and manual controller backwards.
Backwards!
!sdrawkcaB even.
The small, humble, I do what I can kiln has shamed/slain the ceramic artist with the giant ego.
Tomorrow morning, I hope to open up that little gem and see a pyrometric cone all bent out of shape like the one on the bottom.
Not the one on the top:
And hopefully nothing exploded inside.
Then, I would be forced to blame the kiln.
Now that would really be lame.
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