Wednesday, October 20, 2010

First Kiln Firings

Mustafa (my new kiln) has been workin' hard! I documented my first fire in case anything freaky happened, taking notes of any little changes in the kiln program and pictures of what the glass looked like before and after. As you can see, I didn't really do a "test" as my first kiln load of glass... as in, I could have put just a few choice pieces of glass in to see what they did before loading it up with a bunch of work and hitting start! :) But rest assured Mustafa is treating me well and there have been no kiln snafus so far.
I was somewhat conservative in my program as well as the distance between pieces (just in case the kiln had hot spots or the programmer was not properly calibrated)
And I made these two little piles of glass in an open spot on the shelf... they were tests to see how much the glass was moving at these temperatures... you see, this white glass is really stiff, so is the pink and lime green, so I made these little piles to see how flat they would become. If I raised up the temperature of my "Full Fuse" or kept it at that temperature for longer (currently Mustafa stays at full fuse for only 3minutes) I could get these piles to fuse flatter.
Lastly - for all my readers that are fellow glass artists - here is the kiln schedule that I am using:
Segment ..... Rate ... Temp... Hold
1 350 500 0.10
2 450 1000 0.05
3 200 1250 1.30
4 9999 1488 0.03
5 9999 900 1.30
6 50 800 0.01
7 75 500 0.01
8 100 300 0.01
9 Idle to room temp.

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