mel jacobson on thu 17 nov 05
i would have to defer to a ceramic or chemical engineer on the effect
of carbon in an electric kiln. i am a potter, with experience,
but not an engineer.
my observations are:
reducing a standard american electric kiln
will hasten the death of the coils.
the cleaner the atmosphere in an electric kiln, the
longer the coils will work.
i have changed coils in my electric bisque kiln once in 40 years.
and, did that just make it fire a bit faster...that kiln has never
been above cone 08.
industry uses larger coils, rods in dirty atmosphere
kilns.
japanese electric kilns have very large diameter coils.
thick as a finger. they can handle reduction.
and, as lee has pointed out, many do it very well, and have
for many years/ in fact i only saw one fuel kiln in kyoto.
and, it had a scrubber on the stack. thousands of large electric
kilns in japan.
tony:
water and wood fire.
there is a great deal of information that ancient chinese potters
dumped water in their kilns. there are wood blocks showing potters
on top of the kiln with water buckets.
many world wide wood fire potters are looking at this aspect of fire/water.
i have heard some lectures...and they are very interesting.
some spray, some add very wet wood, some inject.
there is a nordic kiln called the `aquagama` that has pipes throughout
the kiln that inject water. owen rye told us that there are several
kilns in australia built on /creeks/springs...the water flows beneath the
kiln and
keeps the bricks damp. i know that many australian potters wash their
wood fired kilns with a hose...soak them down. i have seen the slides.
the big kiln at st. john's here in minnesota injects water.
as for me, i like dry wood. you taught me that tony.
there may be a point when we may do some salt spraying into
our wood kiln...who knows.?
using a garden sprayer, with a fine mist is used by many to
inject salt water into a kiln for salt or soda effects..seems to
be very easy to do. others will know more about that.
just don't use the old balloon trick. take your head off.
mel
from mel/minnetonka.mn.usa
website: http://www.pclink.com/melpots
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