Lee Love on sat 5 feb 05
wjskw@BELLSOUTH.NET wrote:
>Has anyone built a "standard" kiln with TWO chambers, the one to the
>rear (closest to the stack) for soda or salt, and the one in the
>"front" for regular firing? Would that keep the front chamber
>"uncontaminated"? Perhaps even with it's own burners for each
>chamber?
>
>
Yes., people do this Wayne. I have seen several. My friend Dirk
Gillespie in Omaha, had a cool two chambered kiln, the design of both
chambers being like the MFT (two burners, one on each side of the
chimney in the back, but with an arch), that Jerry Horning designed for
him. The chambers were on each side of the stack, with the chimney
going up between them. One chamber was larger than the other.
The burners swiveled, so they could be used on either chamber. The
flues and dampers were designed, so that you could have the draft
opening to either chamber, or, have the draft go from the larger chamber
and then into the smaller chamber on the other side of the chimney, and
then out the chimney. Either chamber could be fired separately, or,
you could fire in the big chamber and bisque in the smaller with the
waste heat, or, glaze fire in the first chamber, and when that was
finished, swivel the burners to the second chamber and finish to glaze
temp in the second chamber. Of course, you could soda fire in the
second chamber, if you didn't want to bisque in it.
I wanted to put a centenary arch chamber with stepdown
grates as a second chamber on my kiln. But I didn't have time to
experiment, because I only had less than three months to set my studio
up, build my kiln and make work for my graduation show. (Arches
really aren't difficult. Nobody should avoid them because they think
a flatop is easier. Flat tops make sense to me on smaller, top loading
kilns. It is important to fit the design to the practical need.
Height adjustibility isn't as simple as one might think in an
atmospheric, downdraft kiln. When you add height, you are going to
increase the chances of reduction, which isn't desirable for bisquing.
This is not a problem in electric kilns..)
Also, I recall,(maybe in Daniel Rhode's kiln book) a
kiln with a wall in the back that was opened to the main chamber at the
top. The partion in the back was supposed to be used for bisque
firing. It might be possible to use something like this to soda
fire in, if you had burners you could use in the smaller partition.
The possibilities are endless....
--
Lee in Mashiko, Japan http://mashiko.org
http://www.livejournal.com/users/togeika/ WEB LOG
http://public.fotki.com/togeika/ Photos!
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