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skutt 1027 kiln firing

updated mon 27 jul 98

 

Dick & Gwen Schenz on sat 25 jul 98

Greetings:

For what it's worth.

We have two Skutt 1027 kilns in out Pottery club her at Sun City Vistoso
just North of Tucson in slightly WET Arizona. I am a retired controls
engineer and when I took over the firing I was told that to get a cone 04
firing in the cine mode, that I would have to program the thing for cone
03. Shock and utter disbelief! Now I am a believer! For some reason, when
we fire to 03 on slow rate with a hold of about 10 min, we get a nice 3:00
o clock bend in an 04 witness cone. If we fire to 04, it barely bends
without a hold of about an hour. I have learned to live with it.

On high fire, cone 5, that is not the case. We fire to cone 5 with a
witness cone of 5 and a 20 to 30 min, hold. Seems to work fine. The two
kilns are slightly different, but both use a controller an a vent system.

Richard Schenz
rschenz@primenet.com

PS Our ceramics club has the same problem and solution for bisque firing.

barn on sun 26 jul 98

Orton has a template card that measures the angle of bend of a cone. Skutt
said if you
determine the correct angle your getting in a firing and call them they have
tables that
will give you the amount of hold time required to finish the desired cone
firing for the
kilnmaster.

Barney

Dick & Gwen Schenz wrote:

> Greetings:
>
> For what it's worth.
>
> We have two Skutt 1027 kilns in out Pottery club her at Sun City Vistoso
> just North of Tucson in slightly WET Arizona. I am a retired controls
> engineer and when I took over the firing I was told that to get a cone 04
> firing in the cine mode, that I would have to program the thing for cone
> 03. Shock and utter disbelief! Now I am a believer! For some reason, when
> we fire to 03 on slow rate with a hold of about 10 min, we get a nice 3:00
> o clock bend in an 04 witness cone. If we fire to 04, it barely bends
> without a hold of about an hour. I have learned to live with it.
>
> On high fire, cone 5, that is not the case. We fire to cone 5 with a
> witness cone of 5 and a 20 to 30 min, hold. Seems to work fine. The two
> kilns are slightly different, but both use a controller an a vent system.
>
> Richard Schenz
> rschenz@primenet.com
>
> PS Our ceramics club has the same problem and solution for bisque firing.