Crystal Bowls!

Each bowl below received a third of a crystal billet, and since the billet didn't fit the reservoir very well I thought, "Hey let's cut the billet in half and throw the second part in during full melt." Which was great, until I was exhausted and couldn't be bothered to make that two hour trip into school one Tuesday just to do that.

On the plus side, I found out that if a dire emergency ever occurred, molds could safely be put on hold for 24 hours at 600 degrees. This made me feel better about my mold making skills - because hey, look how long they held up!

I seem to like stacking my bowls like little flying saucers!

I messed up the crystal re-load during full melt, mixing up the cobalt blue and pale jade green in two bowls. This resulted in one billet exploding (yay, what a waste), and the other billet forming the neatest mistake I have ever seen :D Yay! I didn't believe the bowls had fully melted, so I sent them up and down again - which unfortunately resulted in some unnecessary cracking and fins.

I think with all my frantic rushing and lack of trusting my melts, at the tail end of this semester I managed to sponge up a lot more knowledge about how kiln programs work.

Part of this is sincerely in thanks to Orion, who offers very long and safe schedules - because when it's crunch time and you're in a rush, you start trying to figure out all the ins and outs of the program so you know where you can safely shave off time. If someone just gave me a good program, I'd never know how to properly apply it to different shaped castings, because I wouldn't know what all the numbers meant!

Kiln 1
1) 03 hrs ↑ 120º

2) 12 @ 120º (For some odd reason this is where I put my overnight hold in)

3) 17 hr ↑ 600º

4) 18 hr @ 600º

5) 18:01 hr ↑ 843º

6) 23 hr @ 843º

7) 23:01 hr ↓ 440º

8) 28 hr @ 440º
9) 38 hr ↓ 400º
10) 48 hr ↓ 25º

When I didn't trust the bowls had melted I put them in for this schedule; 

1) 10 hrs ↑ 600º

2) 11 @ 600º (For those of you playing the home version, you only need to get rid of chemical water once.)

3) 11:01 hr ↑ 843º

4) 14 hr @ 843º

5) 14:01 hr ↓ 440º

6) 19 hr @ 440º 
7) 34 hr ↓ 25º (The kiln will never go this low, but it's a good goal ;D)