Karen Sullivan on fri 29 oct 10
I fire 40 year old kilns at school...
I have three Nordstrom kilns...
built in the Pomona valley around
the 1960-70's....
by Melvin Nordstrom
All the monster huge kilns that
were part of the clay programs
in Southern Calif. were Nordstrom kilns.
workhorses.....
dinosaurs....
Just as a side note...
I also have two Alpine wheels...
in an era when Alpine was in el Segundo
Calif...in the 70's...
the motor is an airplane motor....
similar the the wheels that Voulkos
liked...his were soldner growlers.
I think they used the same motors tho.
the wheels are vintage 1970.
I returned to school from a summer
off, and my kilns were not firing as
I remembered they should...they were
firing as though chocked...without
enough gas....
One firing took 5 hours to increase
200 degrees....I saw my life disappearing
with epic and tediously long firings.
I have been spinning..
trying to solve the puzzle....
seems, someone turned the main
gas line down to 1/4 of it's setting...
I will include that as a notch on my
check list of problems in the future...
I checked the line for the kilns
individually...but not the main line....
It didn't occur to me that it would have
been changed...
Problem solved..
many thanks to all who sent info to
help.
karen
Jennifer Boyer on sun 31 oct 10
Back in the 70's I built my first gas kiln and was pretty nervous to fire i=
t
for the first time. I had the same problem. It stuck at a certain temp and
wouldn't go higher. A friend potter had promised to stop by, and when she
heard my problem she went straight to the propane tank: sure enough the
installers had only opened the knob part way, since houses use a small
amount of pressure compared to kilns, which they rarely had to deal with. M=
y
friend saved me!
Jennifer
On Fri, Oct 29, 2010 at 4:45 PM, Karen Sullivan wr=
ote:
> I fire 40 year old kilns at school...
>
> I returned to school from a summer
> off, and my kilns were not firing as
> I remembered they should...they were
> firing as though choked...without
> enough gas....
>
> seems, someone turned the main
> gas line down to 1/4 of it's setting...
>
> karen
>
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