Unspeakable
July 4, 2008 by cynthia
I need to get me some new cusswords. The old ones just don’t have enough oooomph right now.
Toiled mightily for the last few evenings finishing up two pate de verre pieces for tomorrow’s demonstration at the Museum of Contemporary Craft in Portland. Things went swimmingly, albeit without much sleep, and when I checked the kiln late last night it was right on schedule, heading up to process temps. It would be down to room temp about 3AM tomorrow, giving me plenty of time to decant the pieces in the morning, knock off the rough edges and do some rough coldwork as part of the demo.
Hummed through the morning, went out about an hour ago to check the kiln again…and the controller was dead. No lights, nothing. Worse, when I popped the lid the molds hadn’t completed burnout–I could see dark spots where the gum arabic had started to burn but not completed the process.
Not good, not good at all.
A bit of troubleshooting turned up the reason, a tripped breaker. I have a separate electrical panel for the garage/studio with a dedicated circuit for the kiln. Only other thing on that panel right now is my FiOS connection, which doesn’t draw anything like the amperage needed to trip the kiln circuit even if they were shared. I was online this morning while the kiln was clearly not.
All I can figure is an electrical problem with the controller or, more likely, some kind of surge. Investigation is in order.
But for now I’ve got two extremely fragile molds that really can’t be moved or redone without reinvesting the model and using new glass–it would be virtually impossible to shift the mixed glass colors accurately. So I’m going to cross my fingers, take them up veeeeeeerrrrrrry slowly and see if the plaster/silica/kaolin/fibre mix I used will hold (and thank my lucky stars that I decided to use fibreglass reinforcing strips at the corners). At the least I’m going to get flashing–dammit–I can see a couple of cracks in the face coat, but with luck and a lot of coldwork…
Assuming, of course, the dratted kiln doesn’t pull this stunt again.
Fortunately, I’ve got other samples I can bring, and I can still create a couple of simple molds to show the process…and I’ve got many, many process pictures for a slideshow. So all is not lost as far as the demo is concerned.
But clearly, the kiln gods are trying to tell me to get with the program and start working on that new kiln.
Snel-frockey.
Addendum: Started the kiln up again and got an “ERR1″ message, i.e., kiln isn’t heating up. Most likely I’ve blown a relay. Replaced all the relays just shy of a year ago, so I’ve pretty much had it.
New kiln time.
--
The closer you are to a demo, the more things get weird. Works for software, works for glass.
Gee, I dunno, the cusswords I’ve heard you use are pretty spectacular in their own right. Let’s see… I think I know of a relation of your that might, just might, have some ones you haven’t heard of yet. MilSpec quality cusswords.
GcB
Oh, blush. What cusswords? The ones I used during the GAS auction? Naaaaaah…nowhere NEAR strong enough.
Anyway, I’m not going to waste time and money on new relays for this thing, so it’s adios Skutt, hello, whatever. And I need to figure out a way to move two completely dried out molds to a new kiln…which will necessitate even more new cusswords, I suspect.
–sigh–
Big bummer! /well this will get you on your way to a new kiln and that is not all bad. Just the timing is not ok.
I personally don’t know any cusswords…
robin g
OH DEAR!!!!!!! I could sure help you out with cuss words as remember when we invented a few with the demise of the relay switchs while I was there. ughghghg!!! I am so sorry for your difficult time BUT good for the students to know that sometimes thing go sideways. Not that we want to know that , but that it can happen to the best of us. Hope the demo went well anyways. Les
How was the Demo. Awesome I hope and I hope you enjoyed some of the hard work in doing a demo. It can be draining for sure. I think after we did the Demo Days for the Portland Oregon Glass Guild, I slept for days. (or did I , I was sooo tired it was all a blurr) Les
Demo’s the next post up and I thought it went very well. Of course, I mixed and tamped and pounded and pinched a nice big meaty pate de verre bowl in reds and saffrons that probably won’t see a kiln until September but…
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