So, after installing the hinge, I had to fire the kiln to oxidize the elements. Euclid recommended 8 hours at 1080C to do this. I didn't quite go that long, oh well.
But boy did it stink.
But I had been warned that elements do smell the first time that they are turned on. So I wasn't too concerned. But it really smelled. The whole neighbourhood could probably smell it, and was no doubt wondering what the hell was going on.
So, not much to say. I played around with different power levels to figure out what kind of power I need to affect a certain rate. And learned how much power is required to hold at around 1100C. I was very pleasantly surprised that my kiln appears to have plenty of power. WAY more power than my old kiln. My old Olympic wasn't even close to being able to match the cone 6 schedule recommended by Roy & Hesselberth, but this kiln will be able to no problems at all. I just wonder if the elements in that kiln really needed replacing. Probably.
When I opened the kiln the next morning. It was still at 300C after 14 hours of cooling. (A very good sign.) I noticed something disturbing.
It appears that the M-Board smoldered. This was not a good sign. In
fact it was really stressfull. I had a full sheet of M-Board under the
kiln and it would be VERY difficult to remove it if I had to.
I immediately appealed to clayart and the collected wisdom of the contributers.
Here is the thread, so you too can learn about M-Board.
So my fears were allayed. But not in time for me to decide that the M-Board had to go. Even if it was fine (and rationally I suspected it had to be), I just didn't like seeing brown like that.
So, I used a couple of left over bricks and made a one inch thick ring of IFB to support the back of the kiln. It worked so well that I elected to do the whole kiln. So, now the top course of the kiln has IFB all the way to the aluminium skin. This has three beneficial affects, first it looks better, second it covers the fibre (protecting me from it) and third allows the skin to apply tension to the top course of bricks and keep them tight and secure. Of course this ring of IFB replaced the M-Board piece that I used around the peephole opening too.
In order to make these curved pieces, I traced the arc out on the IFB and then used my jig saw to cut them. It definitely worked well enough. Not as precise as the ground bricks, but certainly good enough. For the mitres between the bricks, I just eyeballed it by hand. Absolute precision isn't required here.
