shane mickey on mon 19 feb 07
janine,
i must echo vinces comment on building cheaply. if you go into a kiln build with the guidlines of very low cost, you will eventually start to cut corners or quality. build it right the first time. with a little time and energy you can find/scrounge some used resources, build burners, etc. start by searching within a 100 mile radius of your area for refractory manufacturers, boilers, anything that may use brick, ask for seconds, waste piles etc. if you look long enough you may find a few hundred brick which can offset some cost. The other option is to take a small loan (bank or folks) to build the thing, a small(10-20 cu ft) softbrick downdraft sprung arch kiln can cost as little as $5000 in materials. that is actually not alot of money to spend on a tool that can produce tens fo thousands of dollars per year in pottery. i tell up and coming potters that they can usually produce (in retail value) enough pottery to cover the cost of the kiln. so a kiln can easily be paid off
over the course of a year and if built properly will last decades. now train kilns and woodfiring is another game, learning curves aside; if you got the woodsources and the ability then a really low tech train kiln can be built for very little cost that fires well. I hope this helps and feel free to respond offlist with further questions.
shane mickey
shane mickey pottery and kiln design services
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