Just finished loading the little Olympic gas test kiln. I couldn't get all the tiles in because I was short of shelves. If I could figure out how to cut just one of my old silicon carbide shelves, I'd be able to fit everything in there; but I did get the most important ones loaded.
Firing will be tomorrow when I can start it up very early. This way if I run into a shortage of gas I can refill while the dealer is open. Olympic says it can fire to cone 10 on 5 gallons of propane but of course that may not be for a prolonged firing. I have a 7 gallon tank and have the plumbing set up with a manifold, so I can also hook up the backup 5 gallon tank at the same time. Each, of course, has it's one on/off switch and hose., so I think I should be OK.
The rest of today is going to be spent doing some glaze math and catching up with a lot of snail and email to give my sore back a rest. Dinner is going to be margaritas and a chicken, onion, garlic, tomato, and serrano chiles stir fry with re-fried beans.
That chicken sounds good with the chilis and of course margaritas go well too.
ReplyDeleteIn California a friend fired her big gas kiln with propane and as the tank used up fuel the pressure was reduced, perhaps because she was firing such a big kiln she needed more volume to keep the burners going. It was during cold weather she had problems with not enough fuel, maybe it was the regulator or valve freezing up. Have a good firing.
It probably best to have two tanks manifolded together, so if one freezes up, the other can automatically take over. In Oregon I have two 500 gallons tanks with this setup. For my soda kiln I just have one tank, mainly because of a space problem behind the house. So far it's working OK. With this small, OLympic test kiln I had two tanks manifolded, so I should be OK if the firing in prolonged. At 8am, the kiln is already over 850F, only after a couple of hours of firing.
ReplyDelete