This is my wheel, it was the very 1st piece I got, thanks so much to my gram.
As you can see space is at a premium but I'm looking into some of those adjustable stainless shelves from Lowe's. We had a set years ago and abused them constantly and they took it and survived perfectly.. unfortunately I'm not sure what happened to them. So, that's what I'm planning, it should make for lots more space.
This is my kiln, its nice and small and the best part, it runs on standard household current and doesn't need a 220 stove/dryer outlet to run it. I had wanted a kiln for a long time but for many reasons, (like I rent and don't want to do a major electrical overhaul anyways), I really wanted something small and household. Thanks in large part to a lady named Susan Schumpert who is in sales for Olympic Kilns, I finally got my chance. I had been looking at kilns for some time but they are very expensive and I'm wasn't real trusting of something off craigslist that would cost me hundreds of dollars and may or may not work. After emailing back and forth with Susan for a few months she finally came up with a sale that I jumped at, 20% off of the kiln, 20% off the included shelf kit and free shipping. That may not sound like much but shipping, even on a little kiln is $100 and I only live a few hours from where it was sent. The sale saved me more than $200 and I finally got my kiln!
With some help I set it up and went to plug it in and freaked out because I couldn't! I was expecting the typical (happy face) household outlet but instead got this:
It turned out they had just changed the plug design and hadn't published that fact. It sat for a month while I waited very impatiently for the electrician but my dad saved the day and got everything working when Mom & Dad came down for their 1st Habitat build in Siler City, NC. I've fired many times now, the most recent one has just finished and is cooling you can hear the glass cracking every now and then.
Part of what is in the kiln right now are some re-fires of glass in clay pieces that didn't come out right the 1st time. Some of them looked like this:
Some of the others didn't have enough glass so I added more and melted them again. These pieces confused me at first until I realized what had happened, they are the same pieces! On the left is what they looked like after high firing with blue rutile glaze (which I love!), I then re-fired them at a lower temp to melt the glass, which didn't go so well and couldn't figure out why I had so many mustard yellow pieces. (Just for the record I don't like mustard or yellow) I then realized that because the glaze 'cooks' at about 2230' and I re-fired it to about 1900' to melt the glass, I had actually managed to negate the blue color in the process. The glass didn't come out well so I think it needs some 2230' as well. I am using 3 kinds of glass for these pieces:
-sea glass (which seems to be mostly chunks of old mason jars), a great find from Dorcas (the best thrift store ever).
-stained glass mosaic pieces from Joanne's/Michaels/A.C. Moore
-stained glass "rice"pieces from Michaels... very very small pieces of colored glass
The stained glass (below pic) melts pretty well in the 1900' range but failed to melt well in earlier attempts at lower temps. From what I've read it should melt at about 1600' but not well from what I've seen so far. The sea glass (above pic) seems to need a higher temp to melt so I will be trying it at the 2230' range sometime soon.
This is one of my recent experimental pieces:
The picture doesn't really do it justice but you get the idea. Glass is pretty touchy, you have to heat and cool it slowly or it breaks, but that is the point with what I'm doing. I actually use my clay firing program for the glass, it heats to 1915' degrees, then I turn the kiln off and it cools pretty fast. I will be able to get the pieces out tomorrow probably around late morning/early afternoon. I'm purposely cooling the glass too fast so it develops lots of hairline cracks inside it like you can see in the picture. Actually right now I'm listening to the snap-crackle-pop of the kiln, its not the clay, its all the glass cracking. Clay breaking is quite a bit louder and much more of a sharp noise. I've been told that large clay pieces can sound like a gun shot if they crack while firing in the big kilns at the studio.
Here are a few of the recent successes, you can see the difference between the milky colored glass and the clear glass with a color in it.
Well tomorrow we will find out if there was success in the re-firing, if not it will be re-re-re-fired again or donated into the to be smashed collection. I've found a few people at the studio who do mosaics in various forms who love handmade ceramic pieces to add uniqueness to their pieces and have already given away a box of pieces I hated. They prefer them whole so they can smash the pieces themselves (what fun is that for me??) but I went along with it. Its actually a pretty cool journey... pieces I made and tried a few times to fix or make work, and just absolutely hated will now be smashed and will find new life in the creations of another artist.
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