Gretchen Woodman on sun 10 nov 02
Dear Clayarters,
I found an old electric kiln. It is roughly 2 ft
round by 2.5 ft high. I want to convert it into a
raku kiln. What is the best way to adapt it? Can I
convert it into one that I can lift up and down with a
pulley? If so, do I build a high temp platform out of
firebrick?
I would greatly appreciate any thoughts or suggestions
you have. Thank you.
Gretchen Woodman
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Leland G. Hall on mon 11 nov 02
Hi Gretchen. Congratulations on your project! It'll be fun! You have
lots of choices on approaches to the conversion. One burner, or two. One
will probably do. Two will will probably give more even heat, but maybe
you can can get by with one if you make the hole for it off to the side, so
that the flame shoots along the side-wall, creating a spiral effect.
Maybe. My experience with one in the center, hitting a "flame spitter"
brick is that the kiln has one hotter side. Not good.
Another consideration is your "high temp platform out of firebrick" I've
done this, and discovered that in colder climates, the top layer of bricks
deteriorate rapidly from all the thermal shock. If I were to do it again I
would lay down a layer of ITC coated fibre over the floor and any exposed
soft brick. I've seen this done in this application, and it seems to work,
though I have not tried it myself.
You are going to get a lot of great suggestions on this whole project from
more learned kiln builders than I, so I won't say much more.
Oh, but one more thing. Instead of a complicated pully system, you might
consider a lever. I made a "top hat kiln lifting mechanisim" from 16 feet
of 2" steel pipe, chain and fulcrum. Works good, but was tricky to
stabalize when hanging up in the air. Actually, I never use the gas top
hat fiber kiln any more. Raku with electric every day now. More
consistency for me. Whatever works though. Good luck, and have fun!
Best Regards
Leland Hall
Before The Wheel Enterprises
La Pine, Oregon, USA, where geeze its been cold!
On Sun, 10 Nov 2002 19:35:09 -0800, Gretchen Woodman
wrote:
>Dear Clayarters,
>
> I found an old electric kiln. It is roughly 2 ft
>round by 2.5 ft high. I want to convert it into a
>raku kiln. What is the best way to adapt it? Can I
>convert it into one that I can lift up and down with a
>pulley? If so, do I build a high temp platform out of
>firebrick?
>
>I would greatly appreciate any thoughts or suggestions
>you have. Thank you.
>
>
> Gretchen Woodman
>
>__________________________________________________
>Do you Yahoo!?
>U2 on LAUNCH - Exclusive greatest hits videos
>http://launch.yahoo.com/u2
>
>___________________________________________________________________________
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Orchard Valley Ceramics Arts Guild on mon 11 nov 02
>Dear Clayarters,
>
> I found an old electric kiln. It is roughly 2 ft
>round by 2.5 ft high. I want to convert it into a
>raku kiln. What is the best way to adapt it? Can I
>convert it into one that I can lift up and down with a
>pulley? If so, do I build a high temp platform out of
>firebrick?
There are excellent instructions for converting an
electric kiln in Steve Branfman's book, "Raku:
a Practical Approach." You'll learn a lot from
Steve's book... it's well worth having in your library.
I converted a kiln last year, and I've been very happy
with the results. My kiln is a top-loader. I removed
the lid hinges and added sturdy handles to the lid so I can
quickly lift it off.
Personally, I'm not a fan of those lift-up pulley
kilns. When I open my top-loading kiln, the kiln
retains a lot of heat, so the pieces still in the kiln stay
hot until I get to them.
But when you lift one of those pulley rigs, everything
starts to cool at once. I fired with one for a while, and
the only way to get good results was to have several
folks standing by, and have everyone pull the pots at the
same time, as soon as the kiln shell was lifted.
- Bob Nicholson
>
>I would greatly appreciate any thoughts or suggestions
>you have. Thank you.
>
>
> Gretchen Woodman
>
>__________________________________________________
>Do you Yahoo!?
>U2 on LAUNCH - Exclusive greatest hits videos
>http://launch.yahoo.com/u2
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