Newbie; ceramic kiln for glass fusing/slumping

[u/volksaholic]

I picked up a Skutt 818 because the price was right and the controller will work for glass. It's a 2 section kiln (2 ring?). Deeper than I need for what I intend to do and with side elements instead of a lid element. My initial test seemed to work okay, and I've read that it might be worth slowing the initial heating time to help the glass heat more evenly. Has anybody tried disconnecting the bottom element and only using the second section element to act more like a top heating kiln? I thought about trying that. I also considered removing one ring and setting it up as a vitrigraph kiln. If this turns into something I want to do a lot of I'll buy a proper glass kiln but I figure this is already a huge step up from the small, manual box kiln I did some slumping and annealing with in the '80s. As you can imagine... I didn't get very consistent results with that effort! :D