John has taken on my derelict kiln shelves and his mission is to make them like-new or least "newish". After 36 firing in my kiln and who knows how many firings in the train kiln down in GA (where I picked them up second hand), the layer of kiln wash and wood ash, kiln wash and wood ash, had built up quite a bit. After a ridiculously absurd kiln shelf demo by moi, John went to work on them. About a half hour and a couple of shelves later, John came in to report that we should scrape those suckers completely and start over with the kiln wash! And he was absolutely right. I realized that I was blind to my own kiln shelf status quo (that's Latin for status quo)!!
John pointed out that not only did the layer add weight to the already heavy silicon carbide shelves, but it was also pretty brittle and would come off without too much effort. Well, it's a lot of work, but in the end, the shelves will be a bit lighter and we will gain a little real estate!Some math: With the current layer of wash on the shelves at about 1/8th of an inch, maybe more on some, I figure with 24 shelves, that's about 3 inches in height! As you can see from the picture on the left there will be a whole lot of kiln wash crispies. I've started a bucket to save them. When John's done we'll weigh the bucket to see how much weight we'll not be lifting every time we load and unload the kiln!
Now it's time for some bisque ware rustling and hustling, some wax resisting and some crockery slipping.
Later.
