Bead Woes . . .

I'll have a new set of beads up on eBay tomorrow morning, and they will in all probability be the last beads I'll have for sale for at least 6 weeks or so. The reason? My !@#$%* kiln died today.

I can't believe my luck (or lack thereof) when it comes to kilns. This is the second kiln in 5 years that has died on me. The one that died today was my 'back-up' kiln - the first one I purchased when I started making beads around 5½ years ago. Since this particular kiln never had a controller, meaning I had to 'babysit' it when it was going through the annealing cycle, a few years ago I decided to purchase a mailbox annealer kiln from the USA. At the time, beadmaking was still in its infancy here in Australia, and as I couldn't find a suitable beadmaking kiln, I decided to purchase one from the USA.

That was a great idea - in theory. At the time, it cost me around US$680 for the kiln, however, when you added shipping from the USA to Australia on top of that, and the extra I had to pay when it reached customs, it ended up costing me, in total, close to $2,000. And even that wouldn't have been so bad, but I never had anything but problems with it from day 1. I managed to get about 1½-2 years of usage out of it before it died. Sending it back to the USA for repairing was simply out of the question, but luckily, I had the back-up kiln to tide me over.

Until today, that is. I fired up the kiln earlier today in anticipation of starting on a new set of beads. When I went into the studio about half an hour after turning it on, the first thing I noticed was a strange smell. The only thing that was running at the time was the kiln, so I knew immediately that had to be it, and sure enough, it was going on and off and making this awful "groaning" sound. I turned it off, turned it back on.. still no joy. The last time I tried it, about 3 hours ago, it wouldn't even switch on.

So now I have to find approximately $1800 from somewhere (and I really don't have any clue where I'm going to find that sort of money on such short notice) to purchase a new kiln and wait approximately 6-8 weeks for it to be delivered. I'm purchasing it through my glass supplier, and she's going to call the kiln manufacturers tomorrow to find out exactly how long it should take. She told me that the last few she's ordered through them took less time than that to be delivered, but, at this stage, I really don't have a clue when it will be ready.

Anyway, like I said, the set of beads I'll be listing on eBay tomorrow will be it for a while. Since I still need to earn a living, and the sale of my beads usually supplements my income, it looks like I'm going to have to consider working 7 days a week in my medical transcription job to make up the difference in the meantime. *sigh*

Well.. that's been my weekend. I'm not exactly in the best of moods at the moment, but as the saying goes, "this too shall pass". As soon as I know anything more, I'll update my blog. I hope you had a better weekend than I did, and I'll be back ASAP with lots more beads to offer you.