Disaster zone....

Well today while I was on a roll with my cab making I found a chunk of lampworking left overs and thought I would melt it down. Anyways I popped it in the kiln and after 8 minutes it was all good so I went ahead with the 5 minutes on the next step. Well in that time the glass had fallen over and totally fused onto the base of the kiln. So I quickly got my pan of water and heated the kiln up nice n hot. I then scraped off as much glass as I could into the water.

Of course it all didn't come off so I had to pick off the left overs which then put divets into the base of the kiln. You can see that in the picture below but I also have pointed out cracks I was getting into the base from use.


There was also a little bit of glass stuck to the side of the kiln too which poo'ed me because I can't get that off!! But never mind, it's only small.


While I was scrapping off the glass I put the lid of the kiln onto the microwave dish thinking that it's heat proof and should be fine. Well 30 seconds late and I hear this massive smash...


So anyway I had to sand down the base of the kiln. I thought this would be pretty hard as I have to make sure I get it as level as possible otherwise the back of my cabs won't be flat or the glass may even fall to one side when fusing.

So here is my end result....not too bad if I do say so myself. Considering I was worried as all hell that I had screwed up my kiln and had to buy a new one. I got rid of the cracks and everything, which turned out being the hardest part to sand.



Now I am glad it's all over! But it sure was a good lesson to learn.