Kiln at 868 degrees

So the kiln hit 2030 or so degrees at about 9:15. I had to shut it off. I think it should have shut itself off, but I'm not sure. There is some difference between the cone types and the temperature they bend at. The cone had not bent at 2030. So ... this will need to be tested again. This time it will be at cone 04 which the chart shows at 1915 to 1971 degrees. That'll take less time and I want to fire a glaze next time. The glaze I got is a cone 04 glaze.

http://www.ortonceramic.com/resources/pdf/wall_chart_degreeF.pdf

Need to figure out where the computer runs relative to the chart and if it compensates for heating rate. Oh, this was all at the medium or standard heating rate.

It's about 1:15 a.m. now and it's down to 868 degrees. No longer glowing inside.

The front of the control box probably got up to 150. The shed stayed cool to the touch actually. The top of the shed was warm, but not at all hot.

Good night.

John

Kiln Firing Update

It's about 4:00 p.m. The kiln is at about 1850 degrees. It is starting to glow inside. The outside is now too hot to touch. I don't have any way to measure how hot it's getting. By the way this is a Paragon Janus kiln. The little one.

http://www.paragonweb.com/JANUS1613.cfm

I checked the current at the panel. It's pulling 19.12 amps on each leg. I calculated 18 amps based on the specfications. The resistance of the coils must be a little lower than specified. Well, I need to rerun my math. I think I used 220V. I measured my voltage at 240V using a wiggy. Which is not a real accurate device. So perhaps I should measure the voltage and recalc.

Nothing odd is happenning. It appears to be heating up nicely and in a very controled fashion.

Later,
John

First Kiln Firing Begins

This morning, I made it over to Aadvark in Santa Ana and picked up some cones, a greenware bowl, some blue glaze, and some clear glaze. Mis-read the kiln instruction which said to get 01 cones. I got 1 cones. Still getting used to this.

The cone range is from 022 to 14. It goes 022, 021, 020,...,03, 02, 01, 1,2,3,..., 13,14,15. Kinda wierd. More wierd than wire sizes even. Fortunately the temp difference between a 01 and a 1 is only 30 degrees. So I'm going with it.

I applied the kiln wash to the bottom and the shelves. Mixing this up was easy. It's a fine powder. Make sure you use your N95 dust mask! Just put some in an old butter tub, added water, and mixed with a cheapo throw away brush. I used about a 1/3rd of the bag Paragon sent with the kiln. They said mix it to a consistency of thick cream. I'd say uncut latex paint was closer. Maybe bar-b-q sauce or ketchup. The shelves were thirsty. The kiln bottom was less thirsty than I thought it would be. On the shelves is seemed to be better to get a good glop on there and spread it pretty quickly across the shelf. I was using a 1 inch brush. A 2 inch would have been better actually.

So, it's about 1:00 p.m., it's been on for an hour and is approaching 400 degrees.

It comes on and goes off in about 10 second increments. So it's probably actually a 50% duty cycle. That's very good for the wiring. I now feel a heck of a lot better about the safety margin of the electrical specifications.

More later.

John

Electrical run. Kiln has power

So I got the electrical done today. Put on the shed roof vents and moved the kiln up from the garage. It has been plugged in and I have seen the "Idle" word on the LED panel. Which is what I am supposed to see. Yay!

Success! This has been a long and much interupted project.

Correction on the plug. It was supposed to be and L6-20. I bought the wrong ones. That has been corrected. This is pretty important. The L5-20 will allow a regular 120V plug to be plugged into it. That would spell at least a blown fuse on something, probably ruin whatever you plugged in, and possibly end up with a fire. All bad things. So, the L6-20 will not allow this. One would have to replace the plug on the 120V device. Unlikely and if one did that serves you right I suppose.

I need to supply a more organized and detailed write up of what was done. Here's the recap.

• Built a metal shed for the kiln from scratch.


• Filled in the bricks on my patio so I had a place for everything.


• Provided a 240V sub panel and extended the circut to a plug near the kiln.


• Set up the kiln.

Sounds simple when I put it that way!

Later,
John

Electrical so far ...

No wiring today unfortunately, but I got most of the conduit run. I was all over the place today. ADD! Seriously. Anyway. The sub panel is mounted, the ground rod is in, the conduit between the air conditioner and the sub panel is hooked back up, the conduit between the sub panel and the future home of the 520-R outlet is run.

The conduit between the breaker box / sub panel and the box where the feed comes from needs to be run, the box for the 520-R receptacle, and the wiring needs to be done in the a.m. A few clips for the 3/4" EMT need to be put up too.

This was my first shot at bending EMT. EMT is short for Electrical Metallic Tubing. There are two kinds of metal conduit that you most generally see EMT and Rigid. Rigid is like galvanized water pipe, except the plating is cleaner. EMT has a much thinner wall and can be bent with a hand bender. I bought a new one today.

This is one of those things you can rent but for only $40.00 to buy you are on the border of paying for it if you rent it. It's probably $10.00 a day or something plus your time and fuel and pain in the back side factor. I will use it again in the shop too. Besides, why pass up a good excuse to expand the tool collection? ;-)

Surprisingly I only goofed up one piece of EMT doing the bending. This was my first attempt at doing it ever, so I was pretty happy with that. I'll have to see if I can explain how that works in my next posting.

So, maybe tomorrow, or later today as the case seems to be, the kiln can be test fired.

Later,
John

The Kiln Project

The Kiln project continues on today. The shed, or Dorothy's House as we are calling it, is done. The electrical work is on tap for today. Pictures to follow. Then you can see what the Dorothy thing is about.

I have a two circuit sub panel I am going to put in the 220 V single phase line for the A/C. The A/C line is OK at 30 amps. The Kiln pulls 20 amps. Actually I think it pulls 18 amps max. This is equivalent to four blow dryers. So, not that scary. It's not small however.

Once hooked up I will measure it with the amp clamp and see what the truth is.

I've had more power going with a bunchof halogen work lights to be honest. So been there and nothing has burned down so far. But, better safe than sorry.

So, I am putting 30 amp breakers in the sub panel. The kiln leg will be turned off unless it's being used and then I will shut off the A/C. The plan for summer is to run the A/C at night to get the house chilled, then fire up the kiln early. High fire duration takes like 12 hours. The A/C can probably be turned back on during the cool down leg which is about the last 1/2 to 1/3 of the cycle.

I need to measure the draw during cool down and the draw of the A/C compressor. I suspect both of them together during the intermittent cool down ramp time might bo OK. We'll see. It will depend on how long the kiln coils kick in to keep the ramp cool down rate OK.

Also, as shipped this kiln has one thermo couple. So, when it goes on, all the coils go on. Adding two more thermo couples might lessen the amount of time all three coils are on at the same time. I would expect the lower coil to run more and the top coil to run less.

Slower cool down ramps equate to structurally stronger ceramics, I think. Less cracks anyway.

Later,
John

Mortar & Bricks

Well, the mortar & bricks went less well than I had hoped. I was in hurry at the end of the day to get this done. I dug out a ditch at the end of the last course about 4 - 5 inches below the bottom of the bricks. I mixed up the mortar and it was a little wet. Filled the ditch with the mortar up to the bottom of the bricks and a little more. Then the first course of bricks got set in that. Since it was wet it was "squishy".

The second course got a little harder. Since the mortar was wet and the first course was moving around, things got even harder to keep straight. So, what I tried to do was just get it all assembled and then tweak it to be straight. It was only 6 or 7 bricks, two high.

Once the mortar started to set up it could be cleaned up a little and things could be straightened out and it stayed put.

So, the lesson is make the mortar dry.

Later,
John

From London

So, we are in London. The weather has been pretty rainy. Go figure... Anyway, it's somewhat the same as I recal from 10 years ago and somewhat different. We are getting out to areas I did not get to experience last time too, so that accounts for some of the differences in perception.

We went to south London. It apparently has a reputation os being abit rougher. Why is the south of everything always like that? It's true in L.A., Chicago, San Francisco, Cheyenne Wyo., London, and several other places I've been. Odd.

However, I did not notice anything overtly "bad". Yes, it was lower income. You could tell the people walking around did not have as many material things. There was one totally drunk guy walking the street, can of beer in hand, singing. But, I suppose you could have run into that anywhere in the world. No one approached us in a threatening manner, several people were helpful in giving us directions, and we did not feel unsafe at any time. It's kind of like South Sanfrancisco maybe. It has a bit of a bad rep, but I would move there. You would have to be selective about where, but there are plenty of places within reason. South Central L.A., no.

The Tubes have been cleaned up a lot. Subway stations are always gritty, but these are better than I remember them being. Certainly better than New York and just as heavily used. Culturally it's tremendous. We are here looking at art colleges and I believe the ones we've seen are better than the ones we've seen in the U.S. The facilities are maintained better, and the philosophy is more about getting work done rather than art for arts sake or as a purely academic exercise. But there is clearly an academic flavor about what they are doing.

Well, more later. We are going to start seeing the sites tomorrow. We plan to see a number of museums and such.

John

Patio Bricks Part Three

So the DIY home improvement adventure continued yesterday. Started off leveling the sand. Normally I would use a screed to do this. A screed is any flat rod, piece of wood or whatever you have that is used to straighten sand, dirt, cement, or concrete. The defining part of a screed arrangement is that the rod rides on some kind of a guide on one or both ends.

Typically this guide is a 2 x 4 attached to some stakes driven in the ground. The best way to do this is with metal stakes and a bracket that holds the 2x4. But you can just nail the 2x4 to a wood stake.

Example here: http://www.deeconcrete.com/screedbarholderwood.html

They have these or similar items at Home Depot, Lowes or masonary supply yards.

But I didn't do any of that. This was 32 square feet. Barely big enough to even work with a screed. So, I snapped a chalk line on the building foundation on one side and used the existing patio as a guide on the other. Then I used a 24 in level to check my progress as I went. So this was an eyeball job to be sure.

Here are the short steps:

1.) Put the sand in the hole and "walk it in" by basically stomping it down with you feet. Get it close to the level it should be.

2.) Put in some additional sand and rod it off with a piece of wood or a concrete trowel.

3.) Starting near the existing bricks start setting the bricks.

4.) Sprinkle some additional sand where the brick is going to go and set the first brick. It should be higher than it's neighbor.

5.) Pound it down with a plastic mallet until it is at the right height. Repeat and check with the level every 3 - 4 bricks.

The first row is hard and you will end up taking bricks out, putting in sand or removing sand to get it right. It gets easier as you go. If this is your first time. The entire job may be a challenge.

Also after two rows stand back and be sure it looks like it is sloped the way you want it. Rarely is a patio dead flat. It should have a 1% or better grade so the water runs away from the building. Keep checking it as you go. I had little hump in the center that I had to deal with. A couple bricks had to be removed, but I was able to pound them down for the most part.

Oh, I had to rent a brick saw / block saw to make some cuts around the edges. The layout worked really well. The guys who did the first install did a good job I gotta say. I just had to follow their pattern and it fit.

The next post will be on mixing some mortar and building my first ever brick wall. All two courses of it.

Pictures to follow.

Best,
John

Patio - Part Two

Another DIY home improvement story.

So, today was basically shot getting and hauling bricks. I started out leveling the sand. Got all 20 bags dumped in, needed eight more. So I decided to get the bricks as well.

Surprise! The Home Depot nearest me decided to discontinue them. They had the Terra Cota color, yuk, but no brown, marginally acceptable. The existing stuff is the brown. It's actually a mix of browns and light reds. Could be worse. At $0.59 each, I guess they are OK. I prefer fired clay brick, but I'm not tearing all this out.

So back home to evaluate my options on the manufacturers web site.

http://www.pavestone.com/retail/paver-decor.html

After seeing all the retailers are either Home Depot or Wal*Mart it became apparent to me that going to the next closest Home Depot might be a good bet. It was. Found them. The color is pretty close. In case you are wondering, no, I was not going to call them. You have to wait 20 minutes to talk to someone to get the wrong answer most of the time. As it was I could barely check out. The guy could literally not tell that the stuff on the cart matched the picture in his binder. Holly spatial perception Bat Man.

This was a subjective call too. I needed to see how far off the color was going to be. So a visit was a must.

Loaded up all I could get in the truck.

Then went back to the regular Home depot for the edge bricks. Yeah, I decided to do the edging after all. Figured it would look dumb without it. Also got the sand.

So by the time all that was carried into the back yard, it was 3:00 again. I got a late start after watching George Stephanapholus this morning. It's the only in depth news show I have time for lately.

Go Obama!

Later,
John

Extending the patio - Part One

Just some quick notes on this weekend's project of extending the brick patio out back.

Dude! This is a lot of work! I'm extending the bricks that were here when we bought the place another 32 square feet into a planter bed. This planter bed is hopelessly shaded from the sun and relatively cool. Probably a great place for mushrooms and maybe some ferns, but nothing else. Nothing has ever grown there except some spider plants and they didn't do so well either. The soil is very damp too.

That makes me wonder about the plumbing ... Nah, there's no standing water. When I have seen what they call "slab leaks" there is water pushing up right below the slab level. I've dug down a foot below that and no water is pushing up. So we should be OK.

Soil is a misnomer. It's clay and some dirt. Our street is sitting on top of at least 20 feet of fill I think. They put in a retaining wall and leveled our complex with Main Street. We are at the back of the complex which was the natural low spot back in 1979. It's not anymore.

Anyway here's basically what's happened so far.

The first stop of the day was my cleaners and then OSH. Picked up some heavy duty plastic bags, a square garden spade, and some big plastic bags normally used for storing chairs and such to line the back of the truck with. ('97 Toyota 4-Runner). Headed home. By now it's like 7:30 or eight so I can start with the quiet work. I'm in a condo with neighbors on both sides. So, keeping the peace is an issue at 6:00 a.m.

Then the crap in the planter was loaded out in the 42 gallon 3 mil plastic bags I just got at OSH. Anything less than three mil tears. These are sold under the label "contractor's clean up bags" very often. The brand I get at OSH is Tuffies. I used bags so I could get the stuff through the house to the truck with a minimum of mess.

A lot of people use five gallon plastic buckets too. These are great of you have a dumpster or an open truck. With the 4-Runner I like to keep the mess to a minimum, so having it all individually bagged is a plus. I know, not especially "green" on this one, but you have to compromise I guess. I'm a little surprised however that I have not seen these bags made of recycled polyethylene. They could be any mish mash of colors around. Who cares?

Each bag held 5 - 6 bricks and or 5 - 7 scoops of dirt. About 40 pounds. I then hauled them out to the Toyota 4-Runner. I blew through 24 bags in about an hour. Did some math, figured that was all the truck should handle and went to the dump. The dump weighed the load at about 900 pounds. $20.00 and I'm off for load #2.

Back at the ranch, there is now a soldier course border and a two course (layer of brick) high stub wall between the patio and my hole, which is not totally cleared out yet. I can see under the soldier course there is a small footing. Armed with my 2 pound Estwing sledge or "single jack" I go at it.

Soldier course, by the way is a term for a row of brick set next to each other in the same direction. Thus they look sorta like soldiers all lined up for a parade or something else. (Bring them home damn it.)

OK then ... First thing was to score the brick stub wall with my Makita 4 inch grinder and a diamond blade. I've had this blade for years. I don't use it often, but when I need it, it's great. I scored it where I wanted the demolition to stop. The scoring was marginally effective however. This is concrete brick and does not break as cleanly as clay brick.

Oh, make no mistake, this brick is tough. This is not cinder block or cement brick. This is concrete brick. I think this stuff is tougher than any clay brick by a mile. I'll get a picture of it up soon. It's not as good looking as clay, but it's OK.

So after beating on the stub wall for ten minutes I determined I need a 10 pound sledge and a face shield. My glasses are not adequate eye protection for this one. Off to OSH. They have a nice one with a plastic handle. Presumably there's some fiberglass in it too. I went for that one. It's a Jackson. And it appears to be US made.

Wood handles break too easily. One miss, wood hits brick, handle shatters right at the base of the head and the 10 pound of steel go flying. Bad. They also get loose. I will use this once every two years. When I go to use it, I don't want to have to do handle maintenance.

Metal handles are too jarring and add mass where you don't really get any benefit from it.

As far as the "green" aspect, I think it's a wash. I saved part of a tree. But I created demand for an oil product. The handle will last longer thus diminishing demand for another part of a tree down the road. It'll also diminish demand for another manufactured good and all the resources that go with that.

The fiberglass handles are really the best bet.

So after I get some more Tuffies, an American Optical face shield, very nice, and a couple of other impulse buys I couldn't resist it's back to the bricks.

The face shield assembled easily and was pretty easy to adjust. But could have been better. But the plastic is thick. With that on and my gloves back on I start swinging were I had been beating on it before. It was like the bricks were not even there. The amount of velocity you can get at the end of a long handle combined with 5X the mass made a huge difference.

After about twenty minutes the wall was in pieces and the footing was in one to 18 inch chunks. Ready for the bagging again. So another 20 ish bags later, I'm done with this part and the hole is cleaned out and ready for the sand underlayment.

Another half a ton of garbage to the dump and $20.00 later it's over to Home Depot to get 20 bags of sand and a bag of premix mortar. I got that loaded into the truck and called it quits. I was pretty sore by then. It was 3:00 and I had been running hard since about 6:00 a.m.

So today will begin with loading the sand into the back and leveling that. Then I will go to Home Depot to get more brick and with any luck get this done today.

I need to do a post on how to use a sledge hammer and bust up concrete at some point. There are a couple of fine points I learned the hard way that make life a ton easier. There's also some thought that needs to be given to when the sledge is too small and it's time to go rent some power tools.

Pictures to be added to this post later.

Some Patina Notes

Whaaat? Yeah, patina. I've been making some steel stair rails for my condo. Picture to the left here. Long story. But today I'm getting warmer on the finish.

I decided not to paint them. So I'm using a patina. Best I can tell this solution is a mild acid with something in it that oxidizes the iron a bit. But not so much that it strips the oxide off. I got a process to work pretty well so I'm recording it here.

The patina is sold by Sculpt Nouveua. http://www.sculptnouveau.com/ It's made by Birchwod Casey and goes by the name PC-9 Presto Black (Aka: Gun Bluing)

http://www.birchwoodcasey.com/metal/iron.html

I also got some red dye to give a red tint to blend with my tera cota quarry tile.

The directions are kinda sketchy. So I had to experiment a lot. So far here's the process.

1.) Sand the metal, a lot. I belt sanded the top of the rail and then gave everything else a good once over. The lower bar can't really be seen up close, so it needed to be clean, but not as good looking as the top. Make sure you wear a good dust mask (3M n98) and hearing protection if you are belt sanding.

2.) De-grease with lacquer thinner or acetone. Don't use paint thinner. Paint thinner has oils in it that stay behind. De-greasing requires a bulk wipe down to get all the crap off, and then a second wipe down to get it really clean. Sometimes a third round is needed. The final should be done with paper towels or really clean cotton rags. White only. You don't want any dyes getting on the metal.

If you don't de grease you get the finish picured which is called "birdseye". It's the result of the lacquer not sticking to the oil deposits on the surface of the metal. Also, the patina doesn't go one as easily and you end up using more of it. It's not cheap.

3.) Light acid wash with a 10% or so solution of HcL (33% HcL Pool Acid cut by 1/3 rd.)

4.) Apply the patina solution using a Scotch Brite pad. This was tricky. I started by getting some on the pad and then getting the entire surface damp. Then I put more on the pad and went pack over it. The more you go over it the darker it gets. Don't press too hard or you strip off the oxide layer that you want to leave behind.

There's a fine line here. The Scotch pad aids in agitating the patina to get it to react with the metal, but the harder you work it the less oxide is left behind. The trick appears to be to use as little down force as you can and keep the pad moving all along the rail.

5.) Wipe it down with a dry rag and dry wipe or "burnish" the residue off with a dry rag. Use lots of rags along the process. Dirty rags just leave residue behind.

6.) Repear until it's dark enough. My second rail is lighter than the first one. I might re-do it. Not sure. I'm not sure anyone will really notice.

7.) I applied some red dye in a clear lacquer with a sponge that was wet with lacquer thinner. Again the trick was to wipe the entire rail in one continuos movement. I actuall did one side and then the other. It is streaky, but that's the effect I was looking for. If you want it even, an air brush would be required.

8.) Spray it with clear lacquer.