Joe Sanger is an early riser, up before most people out playing a round of golf. After he puts down his golf clubs he picks up his ceramic tools and heads to the Contra Costa Junior College ceramics department where he can be found two days a week throwing beautiful stoneware and porcelain vases and lidded containers. On his off days from the college Sanger works in his well organized studio, complete with workbench, tools, nuts and bolts, and shelves lined with finely finished glazed ware. Recently he bought a used seven cubic foot Gare kiln on Ebay. The best part about this story was the low kiln purchase price, size, and voltage that matched his studio electrical power capacity. Everything about the kiln seemed perfect except for the fact that it fired too fast even on the slowest setting, causing ware to blow up during bisque firing.
Sanger, contacted John Toki, owner of Leslie Ceramics regarding his kiln problem. This ulitmately lead to Sanger purchasing a new TOKI S1 wall mount controller. The kiln concept was to bypass the existing controls and turn his old kiln into a fully automatic one, which was fine until it was found that the Gare kiln will not work with a wall mount controller due to electronic wiring issues. So back to the drawing board in search of a kiln of the same size with manual controls. Toki got on the phone and called Arturo Maldonado, President of Cress Manufacturing Company, a major kiln supplier located in Carson City, Nevada, and asked if he could locate a good used kiln that would work with the TOKI S1 controller. Maldonado found a kiln and shipped it to Leslie Ceramics, where it is now being installed at Sanger's Studio. The fully automatic TOKI S1 wall mount controller can be programed in less than 12 seconds. It will be wired to Sanger's new-used Cress Kiln. This will simplify his firings, and provide him with perfect firing results while affording him more time spent contributing to one of his favorite charities, Make A Wish Foundation, and golfing!
