Blazing a trail
May. 7th, 2019 10:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
offcntrHave you ever seen an ant trail form? It starts with one ant, aimlessly wandering, leaving a pheromone trail to find its way home again. Looking for a treat.
If it finds something, especially if it finds something good, like your sugar bowl, it heads back to the nest along its back trail, leaving a stronger scent marker that says Food! Food! Other ants start to follow, hurrying along the trail, sometimes cutting corners, smoothing out the lines, laying down new information that slowly, through repetition,defines the smoothest, straightest line between home and their destination.
Yesterday, I was the first ant.
The test firing went fairly well, all told. Eighteen hours from start to finish, which is a little long, but not excessively so. 34 units of gas, which is just about average. Top and bottom of the kiln were almost identical, perhaps a quarter cone cooler at bottom, which can easily be made up in carry-over. And while I won't know what the atmosphere was like until I unload on Wednesday, all signs point to a good reduction.
That said, it was all over the map. I started with the gas too low, so was slower getting to body reduction than I might have, then stalled for three hours between cones 08 and 04. Fortunately, Linda was around to give advice--she fires that kiln more often than I do--so we cranked up the gas, air, and damper and started to gain heat again. Then fiddled with the damper and air to get reduction. Then tweaked the gas back a hair because too much reduction. If there were some way to graph our firing progress in multi-dimensional space (I think it would take 5 axes: time, gas, air, damper, temperature), it'd look like that ant trail, drunkenly wandering down blind alleys and back again.
But like that ant, I kept records of every step. And Linda's firing again next week. She'll take my records, try to separate the mistakes from the good bits, and create her firing, recording all the steps, because, finally, we can gauge the gas numbers as accurately as the air and damper. She'll likely have some flaws, but then Don can take her experiences and improve on them. Eventually, we hope to have a smooth, efficient trail from start to finish, a new firing schedule for our newly upgraded kiln.
If it finds something, especially if it finds something good, like your sugar bowl, it heads back to the nest along its back trail, leaving a stronger scent marker that says Food! Food! Other ants start to follow, hurrying along the trail, sometimes cutting corners, smoothing out the lines, laying down new information that slowly, through repetition,defines the smoothest, straightest line between home and their destination.
Yesterday, I was the first ant.
The test firing went fairly well, all told. Eighteen hours from start to finish, which is a little long, but not excessively so. 34 units of gas, which is just about average. Top and bottom of the kiln were almost identical, perhaps a quarter cone cooler at bottom, which can easily be made up in carry-over. And while I won't know what the atmosphere was like until I unload on Wednesday, all signs point to a good reduction.
That said, it was all over the map. I started with the gas too low, so was slower getting to body reduction than I might have, then stalled for three hours between cones 08 and 04. Fortunately, Linda was around to give advice--she fires that kiln more often than I do--so we cranked up the gas, air, and damper and started to gain heat again. Then fiddled with the damper and air to get reduction. Then tweaked the gas back a hair because too much reduction. If there were some way to graph our firing progress in multi-dimensional space (I think it would take 5 axes: time, gas, air, damper, temperature), it'd look like that ant trail, drunkenly wandering down blind alleys and back again.
But like that ant, I kept records of every step. And Linda's firing again next week. She'll take my records, try to separate the mistakes from the good bits, and create her firing, recording all the steps, because, finally, we can gauge the gas numbers as accurately as the air and damper. She'll likely have some flaws, but then Don can take her experiences and improve on them. Eventually, we hope to have a smooth, efficient trail from start to finish, a new firing schedule for our newly upgraded kiln.