It would appear that one Dr. Judith L. Presler decided to begin her summer vacation a little early. The PHIL3060 (Plato) exam and final meeting was scheduled for 3:30 on Thursday, May 12, 2005. At 3:45 it was confirmed that Dr. Presler had decided not to attend, so pretty much leave the exams with the secretary and exit quietly. I am soooo glad I got up in time for this today… Next time, im using FedEx.
Either way, the semester has been concluded and all is well.
Ramping
Ramping is the increase of heat inside a kiln. A Ramp Rate is the speed at which this occurs, it is messured in Degrees Farenheight per Hour.
to calculate ramp rate:
Final Temprature (or estimate) of chamber – Original Temprature of Chamber
__________________________________________
Time to Complete (in hours)
for example, the kiln completed firing yesterday at 1947°F, after 6 hours, 48 minutes. here is the calculation for ramp rate:
(1947 – 85)/6.8 hours = 273.82 °/hr.
Just an update..
Yesterday’s firing went great. The kiln declared Cone 04 at 1947° F after firing for 6 hours, 48 minutes. I opened the kiln about 2 hours ago, and unloaded it, nothing broke and I have verified that the pieces will hold water. Has anyone noticed that the last few blog entries have sounded like scientific reports?
Images coming soon.
Fire Complete
The first firing of the kiln was concluded at around 7:00am this morning after the kiln reached a holding temprature of 1944 degrees farenheight. That is about 4 degrees above the normal specification for Cone 04, but I guess thats what the kiln’s “intelligent” controller decided was required for reaching the proper saturation in the time it needed to finish firing, I guess it did its final ramp too quickly and needed to compensate. The stoneware pieces came out bright white and the terra cotta pieces are a standard terra-cotta color. I removed the pieces from the kiln at approximately 85 degrees. A full load has been added to the kiln this time and I am running an new firing for the pieces that DIDN’T go into the kiln last night. I am being a little adventurous at the moment with the kiln, I am ramping a little faster tonight than I did last night. I’m hoping that nothing goes wrong with doing this. Last night I ramped at roughly 197 degrees per hour, tonight I am going for closer to 265 degrees per hour. The total run time for last night was supposed to be about 10 hours, and the kiln reported to me this morning that she took 9 hours, 28 minutes to complete. We shall see how long it takes to run this firing, and whether sounds of exploding stoneware is heard or not, I am hoping for not.
Gettin’ Hot In Here
The kiln is up to over 1700° F and rising. There is now an orange glow coming from beneath the lid. I have never really had the whole pyro spirit until now, this is so awesome! Maybe if im lucky I can get this bitch up to Cone 6 fully and go to a white light under the lid. 😀
WHOOOHOOO!!!! FIRE KICKS ASS!
Cone 022
Cone 022 reached! This is the first formal cone level, from 022 we count backward to 01, then we start and 1 and go to 10. That is assuming that the goal is a Cone 10 firing. My goal currently is Cone 04.
Fire Up!
My new kiln has arrived and is already up and running. I took a few pics during the early stages of firing (before any formal cone level has been reached). As you can read from the electornic display, the kiln was at 353° F when I took these pics. For the first firing i’m only doing Cone 04, or roughly 1950° F.
Whole kiln, just getting heated up.
The main control panel. This replaces the typical cone-meter and backup pyrometer setup that was previously used. I like this method because it gives better control over the kiln than the older mechanisms, plus there is very little chance of over-firing because there is no relying on a “cone” to melt and fall over and hit the off button.
Front view of the beast, it isn’t pretty, but she is so HOT! (2232° F max)
Why did the Chicken cross the road?
A friend sent this to me, decided to share it with the blog.
Why did the chicken cross the road?
Zeno of Elea: To prove it could never reach the other side.
Albert Einstein: Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road moved beneath the chicken depends on your frame of reference.
Freud: The fact that you are at all concerned that the chicken crossed the road reveals your underlying sexual insecurity.
Bill Gates: I have just released the new Chicken Office 2000, which will not only cross roads, but will lay eggs, file your important documents, and balance your checkbook.
Darwin: Chickens, over great periods of time, have been naturally selected in such a way that they are now genetically disposed to cross roads.
Karl Marx: It was a historical inevitability.
Captain James T. Kirk: To boldly go where no chicken has gone before.
Social Worker: It crossed the road to be able to understand both sides.
An accountant: It looked in the file and that’s what it did last year.
A consultant: Deregulation of the chicken’s side of the road was threatening its dominant market position. The chicken was faced with significant challenges to create and develop the competencies required for the newly competitive market. Our consulting firm, in a partnering relationship with the client, helped the chicken by rethinking its physical distribution strategy and implementation processes. Using the Poultry Integration Model (PIM), we helped the chicken use its skills, methodologies, knowledge, capital and experiences to align the chicken’s people, processes and technology in support of its overall strategy within a Program Management framework. This was conducive towards the creation of a total business integration solution.
Martin Luther King, Jr.: I envision a world where all chickens will be free to cross roads without having their motives called into question.
Moses: And God came down from the Heavens, and He said unto the chicken, “Thou shalt cross the road.” And the chicken crossed the road, and there was much rejoicing.
Machiavelli: The point is that the chicken crossed the road. Who cares why? The end of crossing the road justifies whatever motive there was.
Timothy Leary: Because that’s the only trip the establishment would let it take.
Colonel Sanders: I missed one?
New Hosting
For the first time in several years I now have opened a web hosting account with an outside provider. DreamHost. I opened the account because it was a good deal and thought I could find some usefulness for it, plus Chris and I had been playing with the idea previously.
So far nothing has been done with the space, except for a little bit of playtime with the one-click installation stuff. I installed Wiki as well as WordPress and some other toys to play with. So far nothing really impressive, but it is kind of cool to have all of these things at my fingertips like this. It is so simple to go in and have the server to self configure for these applications.
I have come to the conclusion that I need to revise my naming system for my server/workstations. My old straight-forward naming system is boring and sometimes redundant. My externally hosted site is on khan.dreamhost.com, which I consider to be a cool name. Other motivations for this feeling are the 30 or so servers owned by Mozilla Foundation which all have unique and distinctive names, even though it seems like half are named after some type of sexually arounsed anphibian….
Anyway.. back to the topic at hand… my new vacancy area. The space is fully equipped for Perl, PHP and other technologies, which makes it perfect for anything I could want to do. One idea I had, at least for the summer, was to have a GITI development area for migrating all modules to v2. Since I am not doing anything this summer I can actually work on GITI and enjoy what I am doing. At the end of the summer I don’t know what I would do with the space (or the extraneous domain that came with it).
I fear moving something that already exists to a new host because of the long time since I trusted someone external with MY websites/domains.
Now I can fly, but…
Now I can fly, but I can’t figure out how to land.
I am finding that now that my pot-throwing technique is improving, I am still having difficulty in the area of removing a finished piece from the wheel head. I have considered going back to bat-throwing, but at this time I feel like I can’t do that, because my wheel head and I have become so familar. When my Artista wheel first arrived, I was so scared of the bare wheel-head, it looked so cold and stiff, like it wasn’t meant for clay. I guess the whole shiney-metal thing threw off my feelings about it at first. Now that I have used it for a while, it is getting that very nice, well used, look.
Lately I have been trying so many different ways to gracefully remove a piece from the wheel head, but it isn’t easy. One technique I have eliminated is the water-as-lubrication method. None of my pots seem to respond well to that, especially not the terra cotta. The wire seems to be about the best, it releases the seal between the clay and the head, but yet still doesn’t really get it going that well. After about 5 or 10 strikes with the wire the piece will begin to move, but it still won’t slide gracefully off the wheel and onto a bat. Thats another thing I am having issues with, no one has made anything like a curved bat that will fit evenly against the wheel head for recieving finished pieces. I know I can’t be the only potter with this particular issue. I was majorly pissed the other day when one of my round pieces became oval as it was moved from wheel head to a bat with a gap of the thickness of the wheel head between head and bat.
I have a lot of work to do before being as competent at the wheel as a professional potter. There are so many different techniques to learn and so many situations that could occur while I am working with the clay. At the moment my focus is on diversifying the types of clay I use, so that I can become more familiar with the medium of my art.