Well, finally have received my new crock pot. It’s a beauty, and really a shame to be using this in my flue curing chamber:
It’s manual (better ones have computerized settings) with high, medium and low. Once again, I am studying how these things work - apparently they will all reach 212F - the difference between the settings is the amount of time it takes for them to get to that temp. I don’t know if having my original pot set to high had any impact on it’s finally not working properly, and perhaps, once you get to the yellowing temp, it may be better to move slowly to the higher temps as you move into wilting and drying....
In any event, my purpose now is to kiln with this. As my original pot will only reach 119F at most, it’s a bit too low for kilning, from what I read. My ‘dilemma’ now is how to wire this up. The cord from the pot must go out through the lid of the chest freezer, so it must be fairly long (about 4 feet) With the original pot, we removed the original electrical cord from the pot, and wired in a long extension cord, directly into the pot itself. I wonder about where the cord actually enters the pot - we taped it up, but over time, that tape is not particularly protective, and with all the moisture in the cabinet, I wonder if the electrics in the pot itself got compromised. My new pot is so nice, I really don’t want to ‘butcher’ it - although, of course, I’ll never use this for cooking! But I would think that having an electrical splice, by just cutting off the plug to the new pot and splicing it to the existing extension lead, inside the chamber, with all that moisture, may not be a great idea. I have to give this some thought......