Kijiji score - nice little kiln and a bunch of other cool stuff too

Why is everyone I meet through Kijiji (aka Canadian Craig's List) a recent widower? The guy I bought my edge/spindle sander from a couple years ago just about started crying on me.

Scored a nice haul (and cheap) off a really nice old guy last night in a mich keas awkward encounter after work.

He lost all interest in his hobbies when his wife passed away about a year ago, so he's selling all his toys dirt cheap, and even selling the house he built himself too.

Beautiful place, hopefully he doesn't wake up one day regretting getting rid of it all. He didnseem.happy that his gear was going to someone who would enjoy it. He told me he just sold his big lathe that was in great condition, with all his tooling, for $250CDN! Somewhere right now, some lucky guy is turning something with a big old grin on his face, I guess... Probably an even bigger one than I have on mine.

what I got:
- 1 small electric kiln (runs on 110v)
He made this himself, seems really well made. Said it's good up to 1700-1800F.
- 1 sturdy steel angle stand for the kiln with a shelf below
- 52 of those little white crucibles
- 23 of which contained a cast aluminum ingot made from scrap automatic transmissions
- 1 very nice #6 (9?) clay-graphite crucible in like new condition. At least think it is a clay-graphite, but he said it was just graphite. Possibly just a language barrier issue, as he is primarily francophone and we were chatting in English.
- 1 big box of IFB's and IFB pieces
- tools for the small crucibles
- 1 very beat up leather apron that once was a very nice one
- 1 pair of reasonably worn asbestos gloves, a couple fingers are frayed to varying degrees.

I don't know if it was just unreasonable expectations due to knowing how light those bricks are, but the kiln is WAY heavier than I thought. It is small but movig it was definitely a job for 2, and a dolly/cart of some kind was very nice to have handy.

Everything works other than the plug for the peep-hole is broken. It'll be very easy to carve a new one from one of the IFB scraps.

Kiln just has on/off control and ceramic cones... Much room to upgrade, in other words, so there will be projects.

I figure I can use this to burn out molds and finally try out this lost wax stuff everyone is so crazy about. And maybe experiment a bit with heat-treating aluminum bronze...



















I figure the bricks just in the kiln alone are probably worth more than what the guy was asking.

Jeff

 

I don't really know, It's definitely curious. He said he used to do some casting, and he certainly seems to have been using them to pour aluminum ingots.

Jeff

 

Good score. (Do something about those exposed element connections though!)

 

Yeah, it's on the list. Thanks!

Jeff

 

I have a decent memory for impressive vocabulary words. So I know that a TC is a thermocouple. I even have a rudimentary idea how one of those works, at least in theory...

PiD and SSR are just a bunch of letters to me though. (I can get along OK in French but my Angry Pixie is terrible.)

This is the project I would use to finally learn about this stuff; thanks for the search terms!

Jeff

 

Much appreciated! Now to find the 'for dummies' YT vids and forum threads showing how to hook it all up.

Jeff

 

What a score! Congrats Jeff.
My guess on that bigger crucible, #6 salamander clay graphite. Looks in good shape.

 

Right? Been hoping to find a bigger cheaper kiln for a couple years now and barely missed out on a couple free ones... But when I saw all those crucibles in his ad, I knew I had to go have a look. Nice guy, we had a nice long chat but I would have liked to hang out a while longer to pick his brain a bit more.

Jeff

 

Nice score!, definitely get a PID temp controller for the kiln, they are as low as $10 online for a copy of a REX brand Japanese controller. Those small crucibles look like ones used for refining gold by oxidizing off any lesser metals.

 

It's funny you should say that...
When I started to ask him about the other one ("looks like a nice clay-graphite crucible you've got there" type of thing), he sort of halfway cut me off with, "it's a graphite crucible... That's for gold! You can fill it up if you have enough gold," grinning. Which threw me off enough that instead of asking if he meant *clay*-graphite like I wanted to, I just smiled back and told him that sadly I do not have enough gold to do that. I'm not sure if he meant to imply the little ones are NOT for gold; likely he was only joking.

All I know for sure is that the aluminum ingots fit in them perfectly, and were stored inside them when I got there.

Jeff

 

They say a picture says a thousand words.

*I* say a video shows a thousand pictures!



Jeff

PS. the kids borrowed my tripod without asking and I couldn't find it when I filmed that. So if the ending gives you motion sickness, don't say you weren't warned!

 

PID controller I found has fuzzy logic. It's pretty cool, the controller will learn and adapt to the system to improve accuracy of control.

 

A YT commenter linked this kit:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Profession...ln-SSR-Kit-Ceramic-Thermocouple-/121092751234

Seems pricey based on numbers mentioned above... Is that really too much, or do I maybe just need to adjust my expectations a bit? I haven't really started shopping around on my own yet, just curious.

Jeff

 

Yeah, there's no rush on this at all. Thanks for the advice & the link. Not sure how or if the guy commenting even realized it was a Canadian seller, or where I am based; I assume that is a coincidence since that wasn't an eBay.CA link. Maybe he's a Canuck too, who knows...

Jeff