Nettie Penman on thu 22 aug 02
After searching the archives, I have come up with nothing on this subject,
so decided to open it up to you all and see if anyone has any
advice/experience/suggestions they might be willing to share.
I have started making large low-relief pieces. By large, I mean up to 36 x
18 inches. I'm also in the planning stages for a new gas kiln. So I'm
attempting to figure out what size shelves will work for this kiln that
can accommodate these larger pieces. I'd like to use the largest sized
shelf that I can reasonably handle. With the nitrite-bonded silicon
carbide shelves, I was thinking that the weight would be more manageable,
but I just talked to someone at Newcastle Refractories and she suggested
that a 24 x 36" shelf should be 1" thick (or at least that's what they
have the tooling for). That means that each shelf would be about 82
pounds. That's way too much for me to handle - even though my new kiln
will be a car kiln. So, my questions are (TA DA!): Should I even bother
to attempt to use large shelves? How much of a problem is it to span
shelves with large flat pieces? Is anyone out there doing similar work and
if so, what size of shelf are you using and how is it working for you? Is
there any "outer limit" on shelf size that works with the three-point
support arrangement? Any and all recommendations and advice will be
appreciated!
Nettie
nettiel@mindspring.com
Mike Gordon on thu 22 aug 02
Nettie,
Just a thought...... maybe fire them on edge? Instead of flat. Mike
Gordon
Mondloch on fri 23 aug 02
Hi Nettie,
My one regret when we built my MFT car kiln, was ordering shelves too small.
I got the nitride bonded 12x24x 1/2" shelves from New Castle. These fit 4 to
a layer on my car bed. I do allot of large flat work and I found spanning
the shelves on a regular basis to be a pain in the butt. So I put in instead
a stack of 3 large shelves 24x 36 x 1 left from a different project, posted
with 9" brick soaps on the 4 corners, and a single stack of the 12x24's. I
had Mark help me set the stack of large shelves initially, and now I just
leave it in. I've had no problem adding round shelves or 12x24's right in
the center of the big shelves when needed.
I really like the New Castle shelves, just wish I'd ordered them larger. Try
to leave yourself enough room when you build the kiln to be able to pull the
cart out far enough to walk all the way around it- makes setting shelves and
unloading the kiln much easier.
Sylvia
---
Mark & Sylvia Mondloch
Silver Creek Pottery & Forge
W6725 Hwy 144
Random Lake ,Wi 53075
HotArt@silvercreekpottery.com
http://www.silvercreekpottery.com
> I have started making large low-relief pieces. By large, I mean up to 36 x
> 18 inches. I'm also in the planning stages for a new gas kiln. So I'm
> attempting to figure out what size shelves will work for this kiln that
> can accommodate these larger pieces. I'd like to use the largest sized
> shelf that I can reasonably handle. With the nitrite-bonded silicon
> carbide shelves, I was thinking that the weight would be more manageable,
> but I just talked to someone at Newcastle Refractories and she suggested
> that a 24 x 36" shelf should be 1" thick (or at least that's what they
> have the tooling for). That means that each shelf would be about 82
> pounds. That's way too much for me to handle - even though my new kiln
> will be a car kiln. So, my questions are (TA DA!): Should I even bother
> to attempt to use large shelves? How much of a problem is it to span
> shelves with large flat pieces? Is anyone out there doing similar work and
> if so, what size of shelf are you using and how is it working for you? Is
> there any "outer limit" on shelf size that works with the three-point
> support arrangement? Any and all recommendations and advice will be
> appreciated!
>
> Nettie
> nettiel@mindspring.com
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