We finally ran the kiln's "first firing" sequence, beginning at 7:30am Sunday morning and finishing at 1:30am Monday morning. Our porch's 121-year-old wood siding and 100-year-old wood flooring were protected from the heat by cement board, but because of all the scary warnings in the kiln manual, we had a fire extinguisher on hand and carefully monitored the temperatures around the kiln every hour or so with our Below are "before" and "after" photos of our porch. As you can see, it did not ignite. All in all, the experience was similar to watching a rock warm up in the sun over 18 hours, but more thrilling because it was our rock. And because our rock reached an internal temperature of 2167oF before its computer shut it down. It's not your average rock.
Because the first firing tempers the kiln elements, the only things I could put in the kiln were the stilts and shelves. The shelves had a coat of kiln wash on them that has now cured; they'll get two more coats. Next time, I'll actually put some pots in.
3 comments:
Congratulations for a successfull first run. Please teach your engineer to properly label graph axis. Seems that he needs a little exercise there ;-)
Yeah, we were in a bit of a giddy rush to enter the data at 1am. And we were using Excel instead of SigmaPlot, which didn't help...
In picture #2, it appears that your new pet rock has a very spiffy ventilation system. Glad the trial went so well.
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