Can Nothing Go Right?!

You do not state whether they were hairline cracks or serious cracks. I had the same from my new kiln and the builder assured me that it is natural for these soft bricks to have hairline cracks, it has to do with the temp. increase and cooling down, apart from it sounding as if your kiln overfired which could be because of a few different reasons of which the most likely would be that you used a controller and what I normally do is to calibrate my controller by firing with a cone at the same time and checking until the cone goes down to make sure that I have an acurate reading on my controller. From then on it should not be a problem to fire to the correct temp. If you have serious cracks I would reccomend that you ask the manufacturer to send someone to take a look and do another test fire taking you through step by step it could be that inferior bricks were used or they were not lined correctly.

I've been told that the cracks don't matter and if you want you can use the kiln mortar to patch them up.

Doug Porter wrote:

well our school just purchased a new kiln last year from olympic. The kiln has been wonderful and has already seen a number of fireings. (about 12) I haven't observed any cracks to be honest but i haven't looked. for me its just getting used to fireing by the controller and learnign to program the little bugger. I want to test using cones but my school says if i use em i pay for em outa my own pocket. This is also the person who was seriously considerign olympics printed recomendation to use asbestose fiber boards as a fire wall.

interestignt hing asbestose after reading up i found not all asbestose is bad just the long fiberd asbestose from australia. Seems there are lots of poisonous things outa that continent. including most of the animals.

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." -- Benjamin Franklin, 1759

Almost all top loading cylindrical Kilns have cracks in the base. When you consider the edges of the base are pinned down by the sides, and the middle expands and contracts with each firing I'd be amazed if they didn't crack. We bought an Olympic 4 cube in 1979, by the time we moved workshops in '84 it had done over 1000 firings. We stopped counting then. It has been fired 3 to 4 times a week ever since. Over the years we've replaced several sets of elements and about 6 bricks. the floor is cracked to hell and as solid as it ever was. Despite looking very beat- up it still fires brilliantly.

I have no connection with the company; just a satisfied customer.

Steve Bath UK

In article , Bri writes

That controller could be the death of me, but more likely we will one day (and I hope that day is soon) be bossom friends ;-)

I had also considered using asbestos---already knowing that not all asbestos is bad---you should have seen the look I got from the guy at Home Depot when I asked if he knew where I could get some.

LMac

Hi Lindsay

Spiders are insects Snakes and crocodiles are reptiles Sharks are fish Portuguese man-o-war and box jellyfish are classified as fish

I re-iterate - there are NO poisonous ANIMALS in Oz - except maybe my wife :-)))) She has been a potter for 32 years, and is sure to have ingested a few poisons along the way!!

Dave

David, sorry to be technical here, but I couldn't resist ;-)

No, they are arachnids; insects have only 6 legs!

Err, I think Coelenterates or something.

But ALL of the above are ANIMALS, they're just not MAMMALS, which most people think of as "animals". All living things are divided into only a few top-level groups. Used to be just Plants and Animals, so it was easy to see where most things stood. But now they've broken out Bacteria and those new-fangled Archaea and some other teensy critters, so common usage is more of a problem.

Bob Masta dqatechATdaqartaDOTcom D A Q A R T A Data AcQuisition And Real-Time Analysis Shareware from Interstellar Research

OK,OK - I stand corrected!!

Still, it was a bit of fun anyway.

Dave

Maybe this group should be renamed as rec.craft.potter'sbiology or something? :))