Rice on wed 5 mar 97
Greetings:
I have a question for anyone.
Recently I designed and built a raku kiln. The base is soft firebrick
sitting on a metal
cart-like thing that in turn sits on metal V-grove wheels- which in turn
ride along angle iron tracks. The kiln walls and roof are made from 4"
ceramic fibre held together by a superstructure of -get this- "hog fencing"
i.e. very strong mesh. The kiln is front loading and the door has holes cut
for the intake and exhaust. I am firing with propane using a raku flame
thrower...
The kiln is excellant for raku - 20 - 25 minutes to reach 1900f.
The other day while looking at some of the disgusting crap glazes that only
an electric kiln can produce I wondered if my new raku kiln could reach
cone 6 temps. Well today I put one little pot in my approx. 8 cubic foot
raku fibre kiln [which is a perfect cube] and blasted the sucker. I made
Mr. Cone 6 pray to Allah in 2 hours flat, plugged up the kiln and waited
for
everything to cool. After about 7 hours I opened the door -the kiln was
still about 500f - and behold !!!! what seemed to be a perfect looking
cone 7 - 71/2 firing sugar bowl. The glaze was completely and utterly done.
Then I called a friend who has about a billion years of pottery experience
and told him about my findings. He immediately informed me that my pot was
probably trashed and would have a gijillion micro cracks and if I put some
boiling water into the test piece, it, and my house would probably explode.
What a piss off! So I heated the test pot up and then stuck it in cold
water. Nothing happened. Next I put the pot in the freezer. After a couple
of hours I will put boiling water in the frozen test and see if it cracks.
If this test works - the pot survives - I will probably do it a few more
times.
So finally this is my question: What tests should I perform in order to
determine if this firing technique is viable? Has anyone heard of anything
like this and if so is there something I'm missing.
P.S. the first version of this message never got on the list - is there a
technical
problem or was it the, uh, hmm - Thought Police?
Fraser Forsythe
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