mel jacobson on wed 28 jun 00
Do any of you folks have a small gas kiln, like the ones Olympic sells,
Laguna sells some, Hormaca, I'm sure there's a few others. Ones that
look like electric kilns and can be moved around so they would work in a
residential neighborhood? I have been told they don't work too well
(inconsistent temperature specifically) but would like to do some
reduction firing without getting a 2000 lb brick thing or building my
own. Any experiences good or bad would be appreciated. I didn't even
find Olympic mentioned under manufacturers in the archives.
Thanks
Cindi
http://www.pclink.com/melpots
written from the farm in wisconsin
Dave Finkelnburg on wed 28 jun 00
Cindi,
I have one such very small gas updraft. 17-inch diameter, 3 sections
high, very much like a small electric. Has two burners firing up through
holes in the floor, one hole in the center of the top. The top, bottom, and
all three wall sections are separate, easily moved around. It is
wonderfully portable.
I have it connected on a flex hose from the gas line to my larger kiln.
I use the small kiln for test work. I can easily reach cone 10 in 4 hours,
which is fine for test tiles.
The drawback I have found with this kiln is I need to devote about the
bottom one-third of the kiln to contolling the flame. The first shelf
creates a sort of burner box, an inch above that I put a second shelf which
effectively serves as the kiln floor. Unless I put a shelf about one inch
below the opening in the top, I get a wide temperature difference between
the bottom and the top of even this small kiln, well over one cone!
Since I fire in reduction some, for the sake of safety I have an 18-inch
chimney on top of the kiln to keep the flame well up above eye level. That
way I don't have to worry about a gust of wind blowing the hot gas into my
face during the day when I really can't see the flame.
For a damper I use two small pieces of fire brick or kiln shelf, set on
top of the chimney. I move them closer or farther apart to get the amount
of dampering desired. I've fired this way with an Oxyprobe this spring and
found I can control the kiln atmosphere in the top half of the kiln quite
precisely. Down on the first shelf the mixing doesn't seem to be as good,
though.
This kiln cools quite rapidly, so it's no good for glazes that need very
slow cooling--at least it would require a lot of firing down to achieve
that. I fired last night to a hard cone 10, shut off the gas at 10:30 p.m.
At 7:30 a.m. the kiln was 140 degrees F. I happen to like that because I
have now examined the glaze tests, evaluated them, made some changes, and am
getting ready to fire again!
I hope this is helpful!
Dave Finkelnburg in warm Idaho
-----Original Message-----
From: mel jacobson
To: CLAYART@LSV.CERAMICS.ORG
Date: Wednesday, June 28, 2000 8:04 AM
Subject: kilns/for cindi
>Do any of you folks have a small gas kiln, like the ones Olympic sells,
>Laguna sells some, Hormaca, I'm sure there's a few others. Ones that
>look like electric kilns and can be moved around so they would work in a
>residential neighborhood? I have been told they don't work too well
>(inconsistent temperature specifically) but would like to do some
>reduction firing without getting a 2000 lb brick thing or building my
>own. Any experiences good or bad would be appreciated. I didn't even
>find Olympic mentioned under manufacturers in the archives.
>
>Thanks
>Cindi
>
>
>http://www.pclink.com/melpots
>written from the farm in wisconsin
>
>___________________________________________________________________________
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melpots@pclink.com.
>
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