John and Jo are preparing to start the warming fires in the three air intake ports at the front of the kiln. John appears momentarily distracted by an interesting newspaper article.
Kai does the honors of lighting the first fire.
Jo takes her turn at fire lighting.
John helps the fire along.
Once the fires in the air intake ports are going, John bricks up the kiln door.
After the fires in the air intake ports have warmed the kiln and built up a few coals, we'll start adding wood to the firebox which is right behind them.
While the cones ultimately determine the progress of the firing, a pyrometer is useful for getting a quick look at what's going on inside the kiln. We had pyrometers taking temperature reading at various locations in the kiln. This is the temperature not long after the fires were started around 11:00 AM on Saturday.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
2 comments:
Just simple bricks are the door? Didn't think they'd hold the heat well enough...
This really is fascinating to me - love the finished kiln product, but had no idea the depth of work behind it.
Many wood and gas fired kiln have a door that's just stacked bricks. Because of the high heat, there's nothing you can use to get a good seal with a swinging-type door so stacking bricks in the opening works as well as anything else.
Post a Comment