Kiln me softly
Sep. 6th, 2017 05:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
offcntrI think it was last November, though it might have been the year before. I'd just had to repair my bisque kiln yet again, when I got an email from Shelly about a kiln she'd found on Craigs-list. It looked like a beauty, a Skutt 1227 (about 30" across the inside, 27" high, same size as my old Olympic), but with computer controls, so basically self-firing. It had been only lightly used, then stored for nearly a decade. The price was not bad, either, somewhere in the range of $2000. (New, they're more than twice that).
It would have been the perfect kiln for me, but for two drawbacks. First, it was in Mt. Vernon, Washington, well on the far side of Seattle, almost to Anacortes (Heck, almost to Canada). Getting there and back to collect it would be a two-day trip. And that was the other drawback.
It was November. I was frantically making pots for my first holiday firing, followed by glazing, firing, unloading, then loading up the van and going to Clayfolk, down in Medford. Come back, and repeat for Holiday Market. There was no possible way to eke out two days anytime before New Years to go kiln hunting.
So I sighed and went back to the studio.
Fast forward to this summer. The August Clayfolk newsletter comes out, and in the ads section is a studio closing sale with a bunch of equipment, including another 1227, computer controlled. I return emailed so fast, the wifi caught fire…
In reply, it sounded even better. Computer control and EnviroVent (a nifty system that pulls noxious gases out through the bottom of the kiln and vents them out doors). Eight kiln shelves. Used briefly as a bisque kiln in North Carolina, shipped to Oregon and then stored in the garage for, this is sounding spooky, nearly a decade while the owner cared for her dying husband. At this point she's decided she's never going to be a full-time potter again, and it's time to let the equipment go.
Current retail value of this package would be around $4500; she's thinking of asking half.
We play phone tag for a couple of days, and when I finally reach her, prepared to offer $2000, the price has gone down to $1800. I put the check in the mail the next day. Sight unseen, not even a photograph. That weekend, we unload the van so that Monday we can drive down to Ashland to collect our new baby.
You see what's coming.
Okay, it wasn't that bad. It was indeed a hardly used Skutt KM 1227, but one of the earliest models, from around 1997. Nobody quite trusted the computer controllers back then, so they'd ordered it with controller and KilnSitter. Dismantling it for transport was easier than with my old kiln, but not nearly as modular and plug-and-play as the current generation.
Oh, and the movers had kinda beat the crap out of it when they moved it from Carolina. Four of the bricks on the bottom row were broken, as was the screw that holds the lid prop in place. The cord switch on the vent was missing a piece, and it looked like they'd stepped on the outgoing duct of the vent. It was squashed flat.
The EnviroVent itself was also an early model, but that might actually be an advantage. The Type 1's had a burlier squirrel-cage fan, and mounted right into the kiln frame, unlike the newer models that press up against the bottom on a spring-loaded monopod.
The kiln shelves were pristine. But they were also one-inch mullite, which is heavy as heck, so I'll probably not be using them.
So, not a bargain, but not an unfair price either. But it's going to take a bunch of work before I blithely sail into the world of care-free, computer-controlled firings.
It would have been the perfect kiln for me, but for two drawbacks. First, it was in Mt. Vernon, Washington, well on the far side of Seattle, almost to Anacortes (Heck, almost to Canada). Getting there and back to collect it would be a two-day trip. And that was the other drawback.
It was November. I was frantically making pots for my first holiday firing, followed by glazing, firing, unloading, then loading up the van and going to Clayfolk, down in Medford. Come back, and repeat for Holiday Market. There was no possible way to eke out two days anytime before New Years to go kiln hunting.
So I sighed and went back to the studio.
Fast forward to this summer. The August Clayfolk newsletter comes out, and in the ads section is a studio closing sale with a bunch of equipment, including another 1227, computer controlled. I return emailed so fast, the wifi caught fire…
In reply, it sounded even better. Computer control and EnviroVent (a nifty system that pulls noxious gases out through the bottom of the kiln and vents them out doors). Eight kiln shelves. Used briefly as a bisque kiln in North Carolina, shipped to Oregon and then stored in the garage for, this is sounding spooky, nearly a decade while the owner cared for her dying husband. At this point she's decided she's never going to be a full-time potter again, and it's time to let the equipment go.
Current retail value of this package would be around $4500; she's thinking of asking half.
We play phone tag for a couple of days, and when I finally reach her, prepared to offer $2000, the price has gone down to $1800. I put the check in the mail the next day. Sight unseen, not even a photograph. That weekend, we unload the van so that Monday we can drive down to Ashland to collect our new baby.
You see what's coming.
Okay, it wasn't that bad. It was indeed a hardly used Skutt KM 1227, but one of the earliest models, from around 1997. Nobody quite trusted the computer controllers back then, so they'd ordered it with controller and KilnSitter. Dismantling it for transport was easier than with my old kiln, but not nearly as modular and plug-and-play as the current generation.
Oh, and the movers had kinda beat the crap out of it when they moved it from Carolina. Four of the bricks on the bottom row were broken, as was the screw that holds the lid prop in place. The cord switch on the vent was missing a piece, and it looked like they'd stepped on the outgoing duct of the vent. It was squashed flat.
The EnviroVent itself was also an early model, but that might actually be an advantage. The Type 1's had a burlier squirrel-cage fan, and mounted right into the kiln frame, unlike the newer models that press up against the bottom on a spring-loaded monopod.
The kiln shelves were pristine. But they were also one-inch mullite, which is heavy as heck, so I'll probably not be using them.
So, not a bargain, but not an unfair price either. But it's going to take a bunch of work before I blithely sail into the world of care-free, computer-controlled firings.