shane mickey on wed 8 feb 06
andy,
i am not familar with wescolite castable, but it is a 2600 degree castable and is designed for a continious hot face temp of 2600 degrees. so cone ten would not be a problem. Insulating castables have been used succesfully in kilns, dense castables are more durable as far as banging into them goes. I have seen many kilns built out of castables, there is currently a large anagama type wood kiln here in north carolina that is built out of homemade castable that is kinda in the middle of dense and insulating, it is holding up great! all considered though, i have not heard of a traditional downdraft kiln being built out of castable but it is possible. I would not however build a kiln out of half brick/ half castable. This sounds as if your setting yourself up for many movement problems in the kiln. This in essence would give you two seperate walls with different expansion rates let alone all the extra work of trying to figure out how to cast this outer wall. With all castables
the major technical challange is getting the mix just right, to dry and it will be crumbly, to wet and it will not set up correctly. Two pallets of insulating castable can build a large kiln. And just to toss it out, i agree with nils lou's recent article to some extent. I have seen a catanary wood kiln built with 5 inches of dense castable and one inch of fiber that fires easily and quickly. I have personally built catanary archs that are only 4.5 inches thick with fiber back up that hold heat very well. good luck with the kiln andy.
shane mickey
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Andrew M Casto on tue 14 feb 06
Just wanted to say thanks for all the responses I received to my castable
questions. I think I have the information and contacts needed to progress
with a workable plan. This list is such an amazing information sharing
tool... I'm very happy to be a part of it.
Thanks,
Andy Casto
www.redbridgepottery.com
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