Wired and Ready

Our old electric kiln is ready to go! Yesterday we fired the last bisque in the gas kiln. We actually have two electric kilns, the one to the right needs a little work. Jeff will do the repairs at some point and we can fire back to back if need be. While the electrician was here we had some more outlets put in the basement. We were using a couple of extension cords down there, one was to run the dehumidifier, and that made us nervous. Little by little this old house will be brought up to the 21st century!

These little salt and pepper pigs came out of the last firing. They are rather tedious to put together. Smaller isn't always easier.

Last week I was assembling a few more and I ended up with an odd number of bodies, so I decided to have some fun with the oddball...

I turned him into a bull! He has larger holes on his back and he will make a great red pepper flake or Parmesan cheese shaker. Isn't he the cutest thing?

We Have The Power...

In between the two hurricanes, Duke Energy came out to our house and installed a transformer at the top of our driveway. The new transformer also meant replacing the utility pole. We have been working on getting this done since August. This house has had a lot weird electrical issues since we bought it in 2015. The lights would dim whenever the heat pump came on and the LED track lighting in the kitchen would barely glow if the toaster oven was running. Turn the microwave on at the same time and the microwave turntable slowed to a crawl and nothing heated up. If I was cooking dinner at night, toaster oven on, lights on, AC running, and Jeff was still working in the studio... his wheel would slow to a crawl!  Our electrician couldn't find anything wrong in the house so we finally called Duke. They sent an engineer out to assess the situation and he determined that the transformer at the end of our long driveway was too far from the house and undersized for the amount of electricity that today's homes require. The fix was putting in this new transformer.

The good news is that it appears to have fixed the problem. Even better news is that we are now having our electrician come this week to wire our electric kiln!

For the last three years we have been firing to bisque in the gas kiln. First we ran out of money to have the electric kiln wired. Second, after living here a bit, we realized we may not have enough power to run the electric kiln... unless we turned everything off in the whole house. While there is nothing wrong with firing the bisque in the gas kiln, it is more work to load. Then there is the time factor. We can be firing a bisque while the gas kiln is firing. Glaze the pots and have them ready for back to back glaze firings. When there are orders to fill it is much more efficient. Lately it seems we are struggling to get things out on time. Fingers crossed that it all works out!

Resourcefulness

 Living the life of a potter often means that you are resourceful by both nature and necessity.

Our electric kiln for bisque firing hasn't been wired yet. Jeff decided that we would bisque in our raku kiln. 

He created a temporary bag wall to divert the flame. It's more time consuming to fire in the raku kiln, but it will get us by for our last glaze firing at the log cabin. Jeff has used this kiln to bisque fire large pots in the past, since it is bigger than our manual electric kiln. He is also considering a glaze firing in this kiln. There are a couple of potters in Seagrove that reduction fire to ^10 in modified electric kilns, with very good results. 

Seeing it an action again, has stirred up my desire to do more raku firings this year. After all, raku was my first love affair with pottery.

bisque complete (finally)

Jeff spent most of yesterday working on our electric kiln. In the end it was the top switch that caused the problem. The switch is ordered and will be shipped today, but who knows how long it will take to get here. Jeff put the switch panel back together, removing the bad switch, and we fired the kiln with just two rings of elements. Since the kiln had reached probably 1000 degrees before pooping out, we fired it pretty quickly last night. We thought it might take a long time to get to ^06 with just two rings of elements but it was done at 1:00 am. Wouldn't you know, the switch that was bad was the newest one of the three. We replaced it not that long ago... of course time gets away from us and if I really think about it, it's probably been at least 2 years!

I still have a few nice looking piggy banks in stock and ready to ship. Next week I should have a few more out of the kiln that haven't already been spoken for. This little guy has some nice carbon trap going on.

it's good to have a handy man...

or woman.

Especially when things break. Last night our elderly, manual, electric kiln quit prior to reaching our bisque temperature. Jeff has taken the controller apart and found the problem... a melted wire. Why do these things all happen at crunch time? Jeff has spare parts from past kilns and he is trying to repair it today. We can always bisque in the gas kiln, but this one is already loaded! It could be that these pots would be fine to glaze at this temperature. We can't take that chance since most of the load is orders, including two vessel sinks.

Keep you fingers crossed that he can fix it without having to order parts.

rambling thoughts...

This evening I was outside glazing pots for the wood firing and as I was glazing I could hear my neighbor's hoe as he worked in his cornfield. It reminded me that making pots is a lot like farming. You need to do what you need to do... no matter what the time is. Like some might say "This ain't no nine to five job".
These thoughts reminded me of a blog post John wrote back in 2006... you can read it by clicking here. If you are so inclined to click and read that post, I think you will be inspired to go back and read more of his blog. His writing was insightful, and reflected the gentle nature of his being. I wish he had had more time on this earth to share more of his wisdom and thoughts through blogging.

In the here and now... I had these pendants made for a raku firing, but decided to glaze them and fire them in the wood kiln. I am excited to see how they react with the ash. The best news that I have tonight is that our electrical problems have all been taken care of! There was nothing wrong with the electric kiln, it was a problem in the electrical box. Our house issues are cured as well...
I will sleep soundly tonight.

An evening at the vineyard

Saturday evening we went out to Zimmerman Vineyards, in Trinity, NC, for their monthly Saturday Music Series. The weather was spectacular. We enjoyed a picnic and music on the patio that overlooks the vineyard.

 The vineyard dogs are always a hoot. This little guy thought the mounds of monkey grass made a perfect bed for lounging.

 These grapevines were in bloom and the owner took a group on a vineyard walk so we could smell the blossoms and have the opportunity to ask questions.

It was such a great weekend and  I was very sad to bring Danielle to the airport in Sunday. I don't want to rush away the summer, but I can't wait until we are in New England in August so we can be together again!
Now it's back to reality and work. Jeff and I are getting ready to wood fire with our friend Ouida in Carthage. Unfortunately over the weekend we had to deal with some electrical problems, one of which included our electric kiln. Jeff took it apart and cleaned some contacts and it still wouldn't turn on. After messing with it for two days we made the decision to unload it and bisque fire in the gas kiln. The electrician is coming out today and we are hoping that the household problem has something to do with the kiln not coming on... but something tells me it's sheer coincidence that both happened at the same time. I am keeping my fingers crossed that this won't be an expensive fix.

What did we do before the internet?

I for one, probably read more books and wasted less time, but this weekend Jeff and I were very thankful for the internet.

Saturday we sanded pots and loaded the bisque kiln in preparation to fire it on Sunday. As usual, we had some pots that weren't completely dry so Jeff wanted to turn it on low for a couple of hours. He turned the switch to on and nothing happened. He checked the breaker and it was in the on position, yet it didn't appear there was any electricity running into the kiln. The timer on the kiln sitter wasn't even working. Before the last firing Jeff had replaced the plug and prior to leaving for NH he unplugged the kiln. We don't own a tester for electrical outlets and it's not like we had anything else that runs on 240 that we could plug into to see if it was working. After fiddling around a bit Jeff finally saw a spark on the kiln sitter, so it appeared we did have electricity.

This kiln is a very old manual L&L...

Once it was determined that there was electricity going into the kiln, Jeff knew that the problem was in the kiln sitter box. He went on line and read that sometimes crud gets on the contacts and needs to be cleaned off. He took the box apart, cleaned them, and when it was re-assembled we had power!

If it wasn't for the good ol' internet we would have had to wait for the next work day to call L&L. Since this was a holiday weekend, that would have meant waiting until Tuesday to fix and fire this thing.
While the kiln was firing yesterday, Jeff went to load pots in David's anagama, and I threw some bowls and assembled these...

only 30 more to go... guess you know what I will be doing today.

Happy Labor Day!