Success!

Whoopee!! Nic and I bought a used kiln a couple of month's ago and just got an outlet put in our garage. I have fired a kiln before... but it was digital and all that was required was to turn it on and press enter. My kiln is about 20 years old and has something called a kiln sitter where you place a bar on the "sitter" and when the kiln gets to the correct temperature (2300 degrees... "that's hotter than the sun!!") it breaks and turns off.

Well...

It breaks and turns off when it is set up correctly!

On our first attempt we actually melted a plate.

The plate actually changed forms and was not the same shape it was when it went in. Also, the plate is placed on a stilt and the stilt actually went through the plate. I have NEVER heard of this happening before!!

After the melting incident, my sweet husband researched firing the kiln and we were actually able to figure out what had gone wrong. We fired the kiln again last night and did several things differently, including setting it up the right way! I vented the kiln this morning and at 10:30 a.m. we had 2 beautifully non-melted tiles!!

The tiles were broken to begin with... just for testing in the kiln!