today the part for the kiln came in the mail! the kiln has been broken for oh...about 4 months, and i just got around to fixing it. you know, cuz we need to fire it on wednesday, so why not fix it til the monday before? so, the part finally comes in today so i head over to arts and crafts to fix it. the kiln is already taken apart because arnie helped me diagnose what part was broken, so i read the directions (i know, right? who knew i would read directions!) and start taking it apart. i get it all taken apart and then put back together. but, i didn't want to put it all the way back together, in case it wasn't going to work to save myself a little bit of trouble. so, i plug it in, put the cone in it, turn it on and BAM there's a spark and a little smoke and then nothing. even though it is a kiln, it's not supposed to smoke or spark just so you know. well, that obviously didn't work.
so i start to check my work. turns out the covering of the kiln sitter (the part that controls the temperature of the kiln) is metal, and since i didn't put it back together all the way, it was resting on one of the controls for the elements, and it blew up. but did i blow just the fuse or the whole kiln....the world might not know...at least for now.
i start to search the entire building for the fuse box. i found 3 different fuse boxes...none of them with blown fuses, but i flip them all anyway. nothing. i find my volt meter and see if there's any electricity coming out of the wall plug, but i can't get a good connection. i trip all the fuses again...still nothing. i finally gave in and called gene the maintenance man. some people have said that gene was chuck norris' dad, and i might just believe it. he comes over with his version of a volt meter and i crack up. he has a light bulb screwed into a socket with two wires coming off of it. he sticks the two wires into the wall and it doesn't come on - that's good news because that means i just blew the fuse. i love that gene's volt meter was a light bulb and mine (being the used-to-be engineer that i am) is fancy and has dials and everything and turns out that the simple method works better. so we found the 4th fuse box and find the tripped breaker and voila! the power comes back on.
this time i put everything back together and THEN turn it on and...IT WORKED! i fixed the kiln...almost by myself.
so what did we learn today? that even though i have an engineering degree, a good ole farm boy can out smart me anyday. who needs college anyways?
