WarmGlass.com

Hi, we lived abroad for 7 years and I am just now returning to glasswork. My equipment and supplies were in a storage facility without heat or a/c. I fired my first pieces and they all migrated to the middle of the kiln shelf and fused together. I used the Basic 6 schedule from this site BASIC 6-Segment Firing Schedules.
http://system96.com/Resources/FiringGuideFahrenheit.pdf with System 96 glass. I suspect the temp was too high but fear there might be other contributing factors.

I used Thinfire shelf paper that no longer looks white from being in storage so long. It looks beige. Does shelf paper deteriorate?

I used to fire my kilns in my kitchen but have room in the garage in our new house. It was colder (low of 40 F0 and rainy when I fired. Does the garage need to be heated?

Thanks in advance for your kind assistance.

Diane

It should not make any difference what's going on outside (rain, cold etc.) It's what's going on inside the kiln that counts! If all pieces migrated toward centre then I suggest you have some kind of vibration going on. Put just a few pieces back in and run a monitored test firing.. try to figure out what is causing garage floor/kiln vibration. Check to make sure your kiln shelf is level. Storing a kiln should not cause any problems... yours looks to be in good shape!

Thinfire shrinkage is my guess.

(oops, Jim Hobbyist got it first)

Thank you both for your input. I will try another fire with scrappy pieces and keep you posted.