Kiln Report The First

Well, nothing melted. :)

So far my experience with my little baby kiln has been completely positive.  The learning curve has been... curvy, but that's not the kiln's fault.



Let's admit it: life is more fun this way.

The biggest single advantage is the cycle time.  The kiln I've been using was made for glass work, and glass has to be heated and cooled slowly or it cracks; glass kilns are therefore set to slowly ramp up temperature, hold the temp for a certain amount of time, and then sloooooowly ramp down.  All summer, each firing I've done has taken 8-9 hours to get through.  Metal isn't that fussy, but there wasn't any way to change the kiln's basic set-up.

MY kiln, on the other hand, has a jillion pre-set programs, including separate menus for metal clay, glass, and porcelain.  On a metal cycle, the kiln ramps as fast as it can, holds for as long as I tell it, then shuts off.  The whole thing takes about three hours.  Dramatically increases production time, lemmee tell you.  Also pulls a lot less power, so costs less, which is a yay.
I originally thought I'd hit the right firing temp exactly right the first try -- I put a note in my kiln log that said: all perfect! <3.  Now it says: all perfect! <3 because when I sat down to polish the second batch, the piece I was working on crumbled to little clay bits.  It looked done, and I hadn't pressed hard enough to test it properly.

At least it's only a kiln and not a nuclear power plant.

So then I learned about re-firing, and somehow (!) managed not to over-cook everything and err in the opposite direction.  Delayed win, but still a W.  Also, the convenience of having the kiln in my house can not be overstated.  I had to re-fire some pieces three times... but I still got that done in a day and had way more control than I'd have had with the previous kiln.  I'm sure no one's shocked to hear that in Monique-world, more control = more happy.

I keep threatening to post pics of, y'know, Actual Jewelry, but haven't.  Hopefully that will happen next week.

Have a great weekend!