Nothing used and suitable was popping up on Craigslist and when I calculated how many mugs I’d have to sell to break even on a new one, it got me pretty down. I admit I looked into doing a go-fund me, but at the end of the day, asking my friends and family for cash for a kiln of MY dreams felt ick when everyone is working so hard on the basics and not always getting to their own dreams of music, surfing, travel, yogaing etc. Plus my spouse was still saying, let’s do this! Let’s just do it right, it’s an investment, it’s too late in the game to get cheap.

So it was time to brainwash myself into spending the retirement savings again! At least I wasn’t spending $200 a month on the community studio and I had basically paid off the construction as we did it with a side gig of after school ceramics for little kids down the street.

But then my friend from the pottery studio called me and told me her friend had a kiln that had been given to her by her church after they had nowhere to put it and no way to use it anymore. The friend had accepted it a few years ago but, because she was a renter, needed the landlord to agree to install the electric to run it in the patio outside of her apartment, which he would not budge on, apparently. So there it had sat under a tarp. And she was moving and decided to NOT move it with her. She was looking for someone to take it off her hands.

The kiln was an 18” Cress from the early 90s. I looked into how much it would cost to revamp all the wiring and put in a new controller. It was smaller and old and would use more electric than the newer thicker-bricked ones that I was shopping for from Skutt…. but it was FREE. And Cress is a good company and it was made before all the crazy planned obsolescence.

The owner of it and I chatted about figuring out a custody order, so to speak, in case she ever got a place where she could plug it in, but in the end she sort of was like, nah, it’s time to say goodbye to this thing and wish it on its merry way. And she didn’t want anything for it since she had gotten it for free and wasn’t sure if it worked. I’m not sure where she moved to but I am grateful to her for letting me adopt her kiln no strings attached.

Will got his truck and Andy and I jumped in and went to get it. It was only a few blocks away, but it was heavy and my back was not good that day so I watched. As her relief to get it out of the way exhaled, I was getting filled with excitement. Energy can’t be created or destroyed!

I organized the little pieces of kiln furniture and we removed the handles to get it through her apartment and then, bippity boppity boop, I had a kiln. We got it out into the studio and plugged it in. And bibbity bippity boop it turned on!

I’ve invested in getting it to fire correctly and feel like it’s pretty dependable now. It’s a bit of a codependent relationship we have- kilns are sort of bratty by nature and can’t imagine leaving someone else to fire it because of the little things I’ve learned that make it functional: how to angle the kiln cone in the sitter, how much to compensate for kiln assembly being set too low, where the best spots are in the kiln, how to deal with the exhaust fan when the switch doesn’t work, etc.

In the pottery world, people name their kilns. If you have any suggestions, for a fussy but loveable old kiln, please leave a comment!

UNSCHEDULED: kiln surprise

UNSCHEDULED: construction