the bad news

I bisque fired yesterday.


My old little kiln has five "light switch" type switches to bring up the temperature slowly. I left instructions for boyfriend to flip the bottom switch around noon so that it could soak and I could start the firing once I got home from work. I had everything set up before I left in the morning and wrote out detailed instructions; even put little pieces of blue tape on the one switch he was supposed to flip and on the main power button.

 

My mistake was that all five switches were flipped to "on" instead of off b/c I never flipped them back to off after the last firing. So, when he flipped the first one, he really flipped it to "off" and all other four were still "on".  He did exactly as I told him, I just didn't double check everything.

By the time i got home around 5, I went over to flip  the next switch and I saw that the kiln had already shut off. It went to cone 04 in less than 5 hours.   Way waaaaaaayyy way too fast.  The reason the first (bisque) firing is supposed to be slow is that if ANY water molecule is still in the clay, the heat will cause it to turn to steam and explode, cracking or busting the pot.  My concern is that it was raining yesterday morning so the air was moist.  And the last minute pots I threw in on top weren't quite bone dry, which is why I was soaking the kiln on low heat for several hours.

I have to wait until the kiln cools down to around 100 degrees before I look inside.  Hopefully late this afternoon she will be ready. 
 
I'm afraid to open the lid.  What horrendous disaster is waiting.......