2+2 22 Teacher Gets Fired
Kristeen Cheek
This short film comedy, Alternative Math, produced by Ideaman Studios, is a hilarious exaggeration of a teacher who is dragged through the mud for simply doing her job. But under the humor, the 9-minute flick shows the dark reality: the lack of respect and trust teachers are given these days. The video shows how modern day society, media, parenting, and school administration have the ability to flip the script on an innocent classroom situation. With the presence of helicopter parents, unjust lawsuits, broken school systems, and scrutinizing media, teachers are left in fear of doing their jobs.
The parents involve the principal who, instead of supporting the teacher, reams her out for upsetting the child and the parents. The parents unite and protest. The school board steps in and suspends the teachers, rather than supporting her for her academic integrity. Then after the media blows it up, she gets fired.
Last time I did this it fired in about 9 hours to cone05 whereas before, using the predetermined UNDERGLAZE etc it did it in about 3 as well. I'm guessing that because these kilns are fairly old that the automatic part goes over time.
Edit - everything is relevant to the flat bit under your dial equalling the direction of the arrow I.E. If the flat bit is at 12 o'clock then when you put the dial back on then the arrow should be at 12 o'clock as well.
I made a few more attempts with the same result - I did the "manual" schedule that was suggested but still had very short firings. I was still worried that I has mistaken the position of "OFF" on my knob so I just tried again to turn the switch while observing the kiln to double check where "off" was. When I'm in the off position, the kiln still creates heat but the elements are much quieter than when I'm in any other position. As soon as I turn the knob at all, the elements get louder. I left the kiln in the off position and watched for a few minutes, and realized that the bottom elements were getting red hot very quickly.
Here is my new theory, maybe someone can let me know if it seems likely: There is a wiring issue with my kiln where no matter what position the knob is in, the bottom set of elements is at full blast. That's why no matter what I do to try to control the timing of my firing, it always ends within 4 hours.
A quick way to sort this out would be to buy a thermostatic "gun" from amazon. Mark the clock face around the dial on the kiln and move from where you think is off anti clockwise measuring every 30 mins at each hour (when I did my test I measured every 30 mins and 1 hour at each hour to see if it was increasing). This should give you an idea.
Do you have an automatic / manual switch? If yes, in the manual mode the bottom elements will be on. In the auto mode the bottom elements will cycle on the built in interval timers. If the interval timers have failed closed then the bottom elements will stay on all the time. Question, in auto mode do the bottom elements cycle on and off?
JohnS--its been a long time responding to this (oh my, has it already been four months??? I'm so sorry!) but I have finally (just now!) gotten a call from the guy who worked on my old Duncan (Peter Yang). Here's the weird situation with that... when I first used that kiln, the dial would click at each of the firing settings--once at 7 o' clock for Overglaze, once at 4 o' clock for Ceramic, once at 2 o' clock for Hi Fire and once at 12 o' clock for Off. It all lined up with the labels on the face of the kiln. But on the very day my elements went crazy, so did the dial: it no longer clicked at the Off position, but it would click at 11 o'clock, and at 10 o' clock and at 2 o'clock. Totally mysterious. When Peter did his test firings on the kiln to isolate why the new elements he put in weren't firing to temperature, he just dealt with it as it was--didn't worry about the clicks, but just used the arrow as his guide because it was installed correctly with the flat bit facing Off. So that's the end of the story, I guess. He tells me that the original Duncan dial was installed right side up, but the later dials made by Paragon for the old Duncan kilns were to be installed upside down. The newest dials, apparently, are completely different and require a conversion kit. I don't know if this is any help at all, but there you have it.
Oh thank you for mentioning this! I had been messing around with that switch when I was trying to troubleshoot and it was in manual mode when I noticed the bottom elements getting red hot. In auto mode the elements cycle on and off, including when the knob is in the off position. I guess next step is to measure the heat like John suggested!
So the slowest this thing will go is the switch set on auto and the top element switch in the off position. The bottom elements will cycle on the timer(s) until after two hours they will go to full on and stay on till the end of firing. Meanwhile starting with the top switch off (knob arrow pointing up to 12:00) and turning counterclockwise at the end of the two hours will be as slow as it can reasonably go. If that all works, then there is a procedure to calibrate the top switch which may reveal if it is just out of calibration or needs to be replaced.
I tried this and was still only able to reach about 5 hours. I added some more ware to the kiln like JohnS suggested, then started at 12 o'clock, waited 2 hours, turned to 10 o'clock, waited 2 hours, turned to 830, and then it shut off after about an hour. Can you tell me about the procedure to calibrate the top switch?
Not trying to be a downer here, with a manual kiln, once it's on high it's on high and it's going to rocket to temp and there's nothing you can do about it at that point. It may be worth getting a pyrometer and seeing how fast it climbs on a medium setting. Maybe you just need to leave it there and let it slowly climb to extend the firing. For a bisque firing it may be that you never need to go to a higher setting than that.
One thing to remember with these old kilns is that we've come along way in how we think about firings. Back when Duncan was building kilns we were pretty much just concerned with it getting to temp, and slowing it down was only an issue at the low end so we didn't blow things up. Plus these kilns were marketed to schools, who preferred fast firings so the kiln wasn't running after the teacher went home for the day. Nowadays we put a lot more thought into what we do at the high end of a firing, because we've learned that poor burnout can be the cause of some glaze problems that we used to attribute to the glaze itself. There's only so much that can be done with a manual kiln, though, so trying to stick to firing schedules and specific rates of climb may be a wasted effort. Assuming everything on your kiln is working, you may just need to adjust your glazes or final temp to get the results you want. Or, budget permitting, get a wall-mounted digital controller to run the kiln with if you really want more control. People have been firing manual kilns for decades with great success, though.
Not a downer at all! I'm so new to this, so the wider perspective is really helpful, I think its what I need the most. I was under the impression that these fast firings were basically incomplete firings that would cause my ware to be brittle or have some other structural issue. Your comment is giving me the impression that these pieces are fully bisque fired, and if I do a glaze firing, the glaze might not turn out the way I want, but the pieces will be complete and structurally fine, am I understanding that correctly?
Your comment is giving me the impression that these pieces are fully bisque fired, and if I do a glaze firing, the glaze might not turn out the way I want, but the pieces will be complete and structurally fine, am I understanding that correctly?
Correct. The only real issue with firing fast is that you may not get all the organic matter burned out during a bisque, which could cause glaze problems. But cone 04 is cone 04, no matter how fast you get there because cones measure heatwork, not temperature. If you're not having glaze problems then you're good to go.
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