Kiln Room

We fire the majority of our ceramic pieces to Cone 06, so that's our default program. To achieve that, we have to make sure the program is set correctly. Just for reference, here’s what we’re looking for when we fire ^06 pottery:

Cone Fire 06

Speed - Medium

Delay - 0

Preheat - 0

Rate - 1843

Alarm - 9999

Press:

• Cone Fire

• Cone

• 909 (this is the code to get to temperature adjustment)

• Enter button

• Cone you want to adjust (06, 04, 6)

• 9039 (the first two numbers "90" are the code for "subtract" and the second two numbers "39" represent the degrees of temperature you want to subtract.)

HISTORY:

Both kilns adjusted 10/8

^06 lowered by 39 degrees
^6 lowered by 45 degrees

The only way to keep us rocking and rolling, is to keep to a schedule. Because our kilns take so long to heat up and cool down, it is critical that we stick to what is know as the “firing schedule”.

At our studio we load the kiln up with pottery and run or “fire” it every Sunday, Wednesday, and Friday. This gives us plenty of time to make our customer’s pieces perfect before pick up!

As you know by now, we want our customers to be able to pick up their pottery 1 week after painting. For us, that looks like this:

Pieces Painted On………….……Available for Pick Up After 3 p.m

Sunday…………………………..……………………Sunday

Monday…………………………..……………………Sunday

Tuesday………….……………………………………Sunday

Wednesday………...….………….…………………Tuesday

Thursday…………..…….………….……………….Tuesday

Friday…………………….…………………………….Friday

Saturday……………………………..…………………Friday

We say after 3 p.m. to give us to get things going for the day; most things are available at noon when we open. Guests who have opted in will receive a text reminder but we encourage people to just come on down. We'll call them if it's going to be late for whatever reason.

You might be asking yourself, how do we keep up with the going-ons of our kiln and pieces? We’ve got an answer for that, in the form of a “kiln log”

Our kiln log is a book that lives in the kiln room. In it, we record the loading and unloading information for each load. That includes…

●      Glaze/Viscosity Test

●      Glaze/Distilled water added

●      Who loaded the kiln

●      Who glazed the pieces

●      What days the pieces in the load were painted

●      How long the kiln ran

●      Who unloaded the kiln

●      A record of any problem pieces and their location in the kiln

●      If witness cones were used
●      Any maintenance that has been done

●      Anything else we can think of that pertains to the load!

You’ll also find useful resources on how to glaze/load uncommon or oddly shaped pieces on the white board in the kiln room. All of this information is critical to producing consistent results over time – think of it as the kiln’s diary!

It's a show, not tell situation for this part. Work with a kiln master to cover the following:

                ●      Loading Kilns

●      Post fire boxes

●      Stilting pieces

●      Setting/changing the program

●      Unloading pieces

●      Finishing pieces and what that entails

o   Magnets

o   Ribbons

o   Stringing letters together

o   Light kits

o   Lids for cups

o   Banding measuring cups

o   Putting together picture frames