When I was a BFA student at the old Tyler School of Art in Elkins Park Pennsylvania, I would often load and fire my own kilns. Our head of the program at the time, Robert Winokour had removed the Dawson Kiln Sitters from all of the old KS model Skutt kilns in the kiln room. Removing the kiln sitters eliminated the shut-off mechanism for the kilns. We would have to estimate the anticipated firing time by adjusting the kiln sitter timer dial, but we were unable to use pyrometric cones with the sitter tube as a method of shutting off the kiln. I spent many nights baby-sitting the kilns while checking in on the firings by viewing through the peep holes to see if my pyrometric cone packs were starting to bend.
Winokour hated kiln sitters with a passion. He was fed up with the never-ending problems that would occur with students using the kiln sitters to shut off the kilns. As a result, firing the kilns became quite the chore. The kiln operator had to be present for the duration of the firing to manually shut off the kiln once the desired cone was perfectly bent to a 90º angle.
What sprung out of his anti kiln-sitter policy was a vibrant underground market for kiln firing services. For the right price, you could hire a fellow student to watch your kiln and make sure that it was shut off at the correct temperature. Needless to say, trusting your college friends with the care of your precious sculpture and pottery turned out to be a terrible idea. You only had to lose one kiln load to over-firing to realize just how important the kiln was to the
successful completion of your work.
One day we got a new kiln in the studio, a new L&L Kiln Mfg Davinci kiln. It was a square top loading kiln with a new Bartlett Instruments “Dynatrol” computer controller. Since this was a new kiln, it was reserved for the graduate students only. They would enjoy a fully automatic and accurate kiln firing thanks to the L&L. In place of undergrad “baby-sitters”, the grad students had thermocouples, custom programs, preheats and controlled cool-downs. One day, I was able to put a prized piece into a grad student’s firing, and it came out perfectly fired. Every time I was allowed to fire something in that L&L, it always came out perfectly fired…with no babysitting! This planted a seed in my mind that L&L was definitely a good kiln. After graduating from Tyler in 2006, I held down a few jobs while trying to still make ceramics in various studios around Philadelphia. While looking around on Craigslist for a new job, I saw a listing for “Kiln Repair Technician”. For a recent BFA ceramics graduate, this job listing seemed too good to be true! I drove myself down to Boothwyn, Pennsylvania to interview with L&L Kilns. Somehow or another, I managed to impress them enough to be asked to come back again. I remember being so pumped to land the job, I was jumping for joy…not only for getting the job, but also for the fact that it was for such an old and well known kiln brand. What I didn’t realize at the time was that L&L was in fact the oldest consumer and school kiln manufacturer in the country. My first day, they sent me back into the factory to see the kilns being built from the ground up. I got a chance to spend time on each station of the manufacturing process. I remember working the brick station where we would slide the famous L&L hard ceramic element holders into the kiln brick. These ceramic element holders would hold the kiln elements in place along the side walls of the kiln, and also protect the brick around the element channel from damage. I learned that L&L had a patent on the element holder design and they were at the forefront of its use in electric kilns. It wasn’t until I began working on kilns in the field that it become apparent just how superior the element holders were when compared to other manufacturers who’s heating elements just sat in the soft kiln brick. I would see other kiln brands with extensive damage to the kiln brick and element channels. The heating elements in these kilns would then spill out of their element channels, sometimes coming into contact with other heating elements causing a short. The structure of the L&L kiln was superior. The hard element holders would stand up to the abuse of an occasional “bump” with a kiln shelf much better than those kilns without element holders. Not only that, but L&L kilns held up to the process of kiln repair much better than other brands. When heating elements age, they grow in diameter and get rough on their exterior. They become very stiff, brittle, and rough. While performing kiln repair and removing worn out heating elements, the kiln brick in kilns without element holders in the element channels would almost always get damaged. Whole chunks of supportive brick would break off in the course of a single repair. If you add up those damages incurred during repairs performed over the course of a kiln’s lifetime, its plain to see that the other brands dont hold a candle to the durability of L&L kilns.
Moving down the production line to the electric panel stations, I learned all about automatic kiln controllers and their use of thermocouple temperature probes and relays to accurately fire a kiln from start to finish. While some kiln brands only use one thermocouple in their kilns, L&L uses three. This enables L&L kilns to utilize “Dynamic Zone Control” where each kiln ring gets power Individually, allowing for more accurate and consistent temperatures across all sections of the kiln. Each kiln load is different, and the conditions in the kiln might not always lend themselves to even and accurate firings. With an L&L kiln, you can make changes to each individual kiln ring, allowing for extremely detailed adjustments.
L&L kilns are extremely durable, and extremely accurate. They are also a breeze to repair. L&L provides ample specifications, instructions, drawings and other information for all of their kilns, allowing any kiln user to operate and maintain their kilns with confidence.
While at L&L I learned the repair process and became factory trained and certified to work on their kilns. I was with L&L for a number of years before I ventured out to start my own kiln repair and sales business. In 2010 “The Kiln Guy” was created as a Philadelphia, PA area kiln service and sales company. In the last 15 years, I have sold a lot of L&L kilns and I have seen how all of my customers absolutely love them! I have seen how well they hold up over years of heavy use compared to other brands. While I do service and repair most brands of electric kilns, I will only sell one brand of kiln and that is L&L. Ask anyone who owns an L&L and they will tell you that that they are hands down, without a doubt, the best electric kiln on the market today.