Wow, time flies, here we are in April already.  I spent last week participating in a grueling Fine Art show called Art & Soup.  I was able to show and get lots of good feedback on a new series of recycled pate de verre panels, which I’ll be sharing in the next weeks.  But, for now, onward to the Questions and Answers!  These are all reader questions that I am reposting here in case anyone else has the same questions.  Reader details have been omitted for privacy.  If you submitted one of these questions and want attribution and a back link, please let me know.

• Q:  I just got a kiln, I carefully researched and researched and finally bought one, a small one for glass 8×8, figured it would be a good  beginners kiln. It comes with a digital pyrometer. When I was shopping around and contacting numerous kiln outlets, one of the places told me I needed to have a device for controlling temperatures.  But they were at least $200 more. They warned me if I didn’t get one  of these I would “have to babysit the kiln.” Well, I thought, so? I  have to babysit the dishwasher or else it overflows, there’s a lot of  things in my life I have to babysit, what’s one more thing?  I finally found your website because using recycled glass is the goal  and I’ve been saving bottles and jars and broken dishes for almost a  year while I saved up for my kiln.  So I get my kiln and I’m reading your information and I was, to put it  mildly, shocked!! I’m figuring out how to read the ramp time  information and looking at two of your ramp times one was 13.5 hours  and one was 22.5 hours. Maybe I’m still not reading these right, but  still, I thought babysitting would be and hour or 2 or 3. As I work  full time I have maybe 2 hours at night and then the weekends I’m out  running to complete errands or other events and having to be home  monitoring the kiln for 12+ hours is not possible. So my kiln sits by  the box it came in, unused, for almost 3 week nows.  I figure there’s 2 solutions. (well, maybe 3, if one of them is that  I’m totally not reading the ramp info properly)  1. Find projects that will only need to be fired for a few hours.  2. Bite the proverbial bullet and buy a controller unit.  http://www.skutt.com/glass/products/GM-2LTcontroller.php  That’s another $400. Or I could try and find a used kiln that has a  controller. That of course could take forever.  Man!! live and learn.  Do you have any suggestions regarding Solution #1 (projects with a  short fire time) or any of the rest?  Thank you so much. I love your site!! I’m completely inspired. (more…)