Its all falling apart!

I was looking in my kiln today and found that it is falling apart. The firebrick that lines the kiln is crumbling. I pulled off all the ruined brick and vacuumed it out and fount that I have large chunks missing from the sides. Some of the elements are exposed. I wanted to get a new kiln next payday but the one I had my eye on is gone. Did I write about it already? (Just checked, seems like I didn't.)

OK here it is. I got some glass to fuse. I had gotten a new pyrometer and I figured that I had tested the kiln enough to try some glass. I picked a bad day to do it, the neighborhood had the big dumpsters all about so that we could fill it up with household trash and yard debris. So my mother came over wanting to clean up the forest of a backyard. I was juggling my attention between the cleanup and the kiln. It was several hours into it that I realized that I was reading the pyrometer wrong and I was about 100 degrees off.

I thought maybe I was close enough that things would still work out, and I continued fusing the glass according to the schedule I found on the net. When it came time to anneal the glass I opened the kiln to quickly cool the temperature to 960 degrees. When I opened it, I noticed that I had not made nice, round, fused pendants, I had made a puddlely mess.

So I decided: bad kiln, need new kiln. I found a real nice one, never used, with the furniture, digital controller, all for the very reasonable price of $400.00. I was excited to get it and was willing to sell anything up to and including my soul to get it. But, when I called on it, I found that I was too late. Someone else got the killer deal.

I found a tiny one just $50.00 more than that one, but it is tiny and I couldn't use it for slumping when I'm ready to do that. I just couldn't bring myself to want to buy that one. So ever the problem solver I looked at what I could do to make my kiln work. I think if I buy a digital pyrometer I should be able to more accurately fuse my glass. Also if I diligently kiln sit I should have better luck. I found a resource that told me you can use a kiln with an infinity switch to fuse glass if you sat right by it with a good book and half an eye on it. So we'll see.

But that brings me around to the kiln falling apart again. Do I even want to buy a $75.00 digital pyrometer when the kiln is crumbling? There are ways to fix it. I can find a repairman here in Utah to clear out the bad firebrick and replace it with new ones. Or I can try to do it myself. It will cost me between $30-$80 to do it myself. I have no idea how much it would cost to have someone do it for me. Sadly I can't do anything until after payday.