Hi guys and welcome back to my channel, Blue Nose Trading. My name is Tori Solis, and today I am going to be replacing the kiln sitter (tube assembly) in my old Paragon Set n Fire. The kiln sitter is a model LT-3K, and I have ordered a replacement from Skutt. It is the K-type extra long assembly piece. I will post a link to where you can get that.
Which kiln sitter (tube) you are going to need is going to depend on your kiln. I would recommend that you ask someone if you're not sure because it does vary. There are lots of different lengths. There's K-type and P-type, so you're going to have to double check. This is generally how you take it out and put the new one in, so let's get to it.
I have a couple different tools here with me today. I have a Philips head screwdriver. I also have a, adjustable... I think they are called pliers. The first thing we are going to need to do is get the plate off. I already loosened this, so I am going to take my adjustable pliers and take these face plate bolts off. I kind of already had them loosened, so I can get them with my hands. I am going to set them all together off to the side. There might be better tools for this, but these are the tools that I've got. So, if you've got a better tool, use it. Don't be hating on my tools.
Now that we have gotten that off, this isn't going to come off because it's still connected here by these two screws, which in my case can be removed with a Philips head. So we will just take these out. Take this out.
Just as a reminder, in case I didn't mention it, you do need to make sure that you have NO POWER whatsoever going to your kiln. You want to turn it off at the breaker, so that you don't accidentally electrocute yourself. Important note.
Now there's still two screws, here and here, underneath the plate of the kiln sitter. It's another Philips head screw, so we are going to take those out. Alright, now that I have all of the screws out, I am going to be able take off this face plate, a little. It's kind of connected to wires and stuff, so you have to kind of be careful and jiggle it out. If you get stuck on something like me, there we go, you just kind of have to wiggle gently and see what you are stuck on,.
This is the kiln sitter (tube) right here, which is what we are going to be taking out. So I am just going to pull this whole assembly out, just like that. As you can see here, it was broken. One of the pieces that holds up the sitter is totally gone so it doesn't hold up and you can't put a cone in there. So that's broken. Then we are going to take the new part, and we are going to pray that it fits.
It does have a thing on the new one that says "top". So this is the top, it's going to go in like this. We're going to pull off this gauge here and then work it in very carefully. So if you look into your kiln hold. See if we can get a better angle here... Looking into your kiln hole here, you can see that there is, there is a hole, right there. That's where the kiln sitter (tube) needs to go into. So let me see if I can get it in there... throwing the camera all around... So we are going to go in... carefully... into the hole... ok. And then that, is how we put it in there.
The next thing I am going to do is check on the inside of the kiln to see if it is sticking out. And that we can see it to make sure that we got the right size. *oof* So coming into the kiln, we're going to open it up and YAY! The kiln sitter is sitting there at the appropriate spot, which means that I ordered the right size. And, if you can see all the glaze drips, that will be my next video of cleaning those out and repairing that floor, as I restore this kiln.
So, let's finish putting the kiln sitter in. So the new kiln sitter (tube) came with new screws. I'm going to remove those screws. These are the ones that are going to hold it into the *oh no*, into the face plate. So we are gently removing the screws. You could remove them before you stick it in there if you are ambitious, and smart.
Alright, we are going to line up this kiln sitter with this face plate. We want to get the holes here lined up with the kiln sitter itself. We are going to take the screws, they are flat screws, that's important because the outside plate isn't going to fit on there if you don't use the flat screws to hold the kiln sitter (tube) to the face plate.
I'm holding the kiln sitter (tube) against the faceplate with my other hand on the back so I can line up the screw. Then I'm going to screw it in here. Now that I got that one in, the second one will be a lot easier because it's already lined up. You might have to jiggle it a little bit to find the hole exactly, like me, who said it was lined up and then.... just a little lower, there we go. Now we got it in there good.
So now that we have that, the kiln sitter is attached here. Hopefully I put it in the right way... yup, that is correct. Now we are going to want to put our face plate back on. Just line the face plate back up, get those other screws, stick them right here. Ok, let's just get this attached. There we go. There's a little... lot of stuff in there. Putting these in by hand. I will tighten them up later. Right now I am just putting them in there so I don't loose them.
The last thing I am going to have to do here is this part right here that hold my kiln sitter. The new one didn't come with that piece, so I'm going to have to find this little screw and get this off of here and put it onto here. I'm going to go find, that piece, and I will be back.
Ok, so I found this pieces to take off this here. And there are better tools for this, but these are the tools I found. I'm not using the drill for this, that is a little too hardcore so I'm just going to hand crank it around. Again, if you got better tools use em. There are definitely better tools. Alright, so there's two of these on here, and I managed to get the bottom one unscrewed, but the top one appears to be stripped. So I am going to have to find something to cut this with, this piece of metal so I can get this one off and use it. So... I'm going to go find that.
Ok so what I found to remove this piece that I need here by cutting the metal is a Dremel with a metal cutting tool, some safety glasses, and some water for coolant. Let's just see about getting through it, very carefully. I think... there we go. Alright. I was able to get that piece off, so we can go and put this back on.
Alright, so that was a side excursion to get this piece for the kiln sitter which is going to basically hold the sitter down, so it, you know, works. We've got the little screw here that goes into the top. I'm just going to put this on here how it goes, and tighten that little screw into the top to hold it tight. I'm going give it a little twist with the pliers. Like, I said, if you got better tools use em, I'm using what I got to don't at me.
Now, this should work, let's see. We're going to get one of our small cones. Grab one of these little baby cones here. Oh, they're all stuck together. So now I've got a cone. This is a cone, cone 5 cone, and I'm going to go into my kiln. When I put this cone in here... cone... there we go. When that cone is in there, then out here, this can be turned and then this is held up, and when the cone falls, this will fall down. My kiln sitter is now fixed and functional, so that is pretty fantastic.
Thanks for tuning in this week guys. I hope you found this helpful as we changed out the kiln sitter (tube) in an old manual Paragon Set n Fire kiln. I didn't take any of the trials, tribulations or steps that I had to take out of this, just in case you run into them too. But it may be a smoother process for you, or not, it just really depends. I thought it was pretty smooth other than that weird little part right here that we had to get off. If you thought this video was helpful, go ahead and give it a thumbs up. If you'd like to see a weekly art video, and tag along with my ceramic journey, you can subscribe to this channel, Blue Nose Trading. If you'd like to support my channel and get access to all of my videos, and some exclusive access to some exclusive content, you can find me at patreon.com/bluenosetrading, and I will see you guys next week!
K-TYPE SITTER TUBE ASSEMBLY: https://tinyurl.com/29beewyr
P-TYPE SITTER TUBE ASSEMBLY: https://tinyurl.com/2p9xkfa6
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