rohde on thu 18 jan 01
does anyone know of any early midwestern american kiln design?????
Les Crimp on fri 19 jan 01
What kind of a kiln are you asking about. We have a 100 year old muffle
kiln made in Detroit.
Les Crimp.
lcrimp@home.com
Dannon Rhudy on fri 19 jan 01
At 04:35 PM 01/18/2001 -0800, you wrote:
>does anyone know of any early midwestern american kiln design?????
Many brick-makers in Southern Indiana used beehive kilns. Most
have long since ceased to make bricks, but the kilns are still to be
found here and there, especially near or in very small towns. There
were also groundhog kilns, and off-shoots of same.
regards
Dannon Rhudy
Bill and Sylvia Shirley on fri 19 jan 01
There are a bunch of old beehive kilns here in Pittsburg,
Kansas at the local clay pipe company. They are still in
use, and I believe near or past 100 years old. (I don't
know if that's "early" enough for your purposes.) Of
course, they had to redesign them slightly, enlarging the
doors, because the clay pipe they make nowadays is a lot
bigger than it used to be. They fire with gas now, but I
think originally they were fired with wood.
I recently had a tour of that plant, and it was really
interesting to see. HUGE extruders (I wish David Hendley
could have seen those things!) spit out pipes about 4'
across with 2" walls. 10 feet tall in about 2 minutes.
After being cut from the extruder, they were trimmed by hand
with ordinary cheese cutters! Their big drying rooms had
perforated flooring, where humid air was circulated for
weeks till they were ready to fire.
The clay mixing room was a little troublesome to me. They
had clay running along conveyor belts where it was mixed
with Barium Carb, and the dust really flew! There were
about three guys working in that room and not a respirator
in sight as far as I could see. I asked about safety
concerns with the barium (or the clay dust for that matter),
and they said it wouldn't hurt anybody unless they ate it.
Hmmm.
That's more than you asked for. Sorry.
Sylvia Shirley
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