Monday, April 20, 2015

I bought a kiln!

I finally took the plunge and bought my own kiln. It's a downdraft gas kiln and it's HUGE! Inside diameter is over 27 inches wide and at least that tall. Has multiple rings so you can fire smaller batches. Came with a pyrometer and all the furniture necessary for firing. Did I mention it's a gas kiln? Yep. This means I don't have to run a dedicated 220 circuit to run it, and I don't have to worry about a high electric bill. Did I mention it's a gas kiln? Yep. This also means I have to get another 100 lb propane tank. I already have one, but the gas line is configured to run two tanks at once. This is to prevent the propane tanks from freezing over when running above 1100.
This kiln can fire up to cone 10. The guy I bought it from says that you can get about 3 cone 6 firings from one 100 lb propane tank. Being that it currently costs me less than $50 to fill my 100 lb propane tank, that means firings shouldn't be too expensive on the propane bill.
I haven't had time to take pictures of the kiln nor my bonsai projects. Been too busy with work. Heck I haven't had time to read through the manual for my kiln! But it's there. In MY garage. And it will be ready for me when I'm ready to plunge my hands back into the mud.
OH! The kiln... the guy happened to have a few Japanese maple seedlings for sale! He wasn't really selling them, but he had a few he was going to plant for his Japanese garden. Being I had 'spent so much money' on his kiln, he let me buy five maples. Looks like they were about 1-3 years old. Just little things really but I have Japanese maples!
Speaking of which, the weather has finally started to warm up a bit. I now have about 30 Japanese maple 'deshojo' seedlings. Most have their first set up true leaves. The color is a deep red color, more like a burgundy or maroon on most of these. I don't really care for this shade of red. I would prefer they were simply red, or even crimson.
Home Depot recently had one gallon azaleas on special for $2.50 for ONE DAY! I missed the sale, however. My mom bought me ONE azalea. ONE! She thought they'd still be on special the next day. They weren't. They were $6 each. Seems they were having one day sales for like a week.

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