Fired with cones 6,7,8 on top and bottom shelves. Pyrometer at middle shelf, didn’t display over 1215C.
Hotter on bottom than top. By cone, looks like cone 9+ on the bottom, cone 9 at the middle, and cone 8+ at the top.
Reduction strong at top shelf, weaker at middle and bottom.
The last firing of the wood kiln, I mixed up a glaze of 65 mystery wood ash and 35 Amakusa porcelain stone. I expected a dark green or yellow glassy ash glaze that didn’t run much. I even had the test tiles from around 5 years ago that showed what I’d get.
Well, I ended up getting a rust red sintered crust on every pot I put that glaze on, and it was a lot of pots. Even in areas that got up to cone 13, that glaze did not melt. It was very confusing since I had the test tiles showing a green glossy glaze.
With the new tiny kiln, I was able to fire twice today, 2 sets of test tiles. One set using the mystery wood ash from the crusty rust refractory debacle, and the other set using my normal mixed wood ash. Each set was fired for 90 minutes to cone 9 (yep, just 90 minutes to cone 9!) and all the recipes were exactly the same save for the type of ash.
80 ash / 40 feldspar / 10 porcelain stone. L tile using mixed wood ash, R tile using mystery ash
80 ash / 40 feldspar. L tile using mixed wood ash, R tile using mystery ash
70 ash / 40 feldspar. L tile using mixed wood ash, R tile using mystery ash
cone 9 down, 2nd set, same glazes, one clay
firing the kiln, cone 9 flat, 6 tiles (3 glazes on two clays)
I think it is safe to say that these ashes are not interchangeable. The mystery ash was from a neighbor’s wood stove, and I have no idea what it was. At any rate, it seems to have been reduced to almost pure silica. Sure enough, the glazes with the regular mixed wood ash turned out as expected. The atmosphere in the tiny test kiln is interesting. The 80/40 test tile came out reduced while the others were oxidized, only 2-3cm apart in either direction.
So, in short, mystery solved, and it didn’t require waiting for a big kiln firing. All in all, this tiny kiln is turning out to be very useful indeed, and easy to fire.
My weed burner came in the mail this afternoon and I wasted no time getting everything ready for the first real test of the tiny test kiln.
I prepared 3 sets of glaze tile pairs and set them in the kiln, along with one Orton cone (#6). I fired it up at 4pm. At 5pm cone 6 was flat. Easy peasy! Next time, all the way to cone 10, when I have some more free time for testing.
after an hour, burner off and lid off to cool it down quickly.
Since switching over to the new wood kiln, there has been a need to tweek my gas kiln glazes, as well as develop new glazes for wood firing. Problem is, it is hard to test new glazes because the wood kiln gets fired infrequently, and I fire the gas kiln much less now because most of the work goes into the wood kiln. So I need something that I can fire test tiles in, and after looking at some little electric test kilns, (and their prices) I decided to build a propane gas fueled test kiln.
I had the materials laying around, and scavenged some from previous projects. I came up with this little Itte-Koi (going and coming) style kiln. It is basically just a scaled down version of the first gas kiln I built 7 years ago. This one only required about 20 bricks, and the hardest part was carving the chimney bricks. Thin brick slices hold up the floor/shelf, the flame goes in the bottom front, climbs up the rear and comes back around down to the exit flue at the middle front.
The chimney brick shown strapped to the front was a mistake, I replaced it later with one that wasn’t cut through completely. I had carved this one through because my larger version had a passive damper here, but it seemed like too much trouble on this tiny kiln. Much easier to lay a slice of brick over the top of the chimney.
Finished kiln, bound with stainless steel wire
Angle iron in place
view down the chimney
Front half of chimney is one brick capping the front, and bound in place
Chimney bricks with exit flue cut from the bottom
brick carved for burner port
floor/shelf propped up with brick slices
side and rear walls
3 base bricks
3 more bricks across the top finish the kiln. I later set the whole thing on a flat stand with wheels and fired it up with a raku burner I had laying around. Waaaaayyyy overpowered. Within 10 minutes I had red heat in the chamber, but there was a tall flame coming from the chimney because of all the unburnt gas igniting as it left the kiln. This with the regulator set about as low as it would go, so I need a smaller burner, probably a small weed burner or reduction burner for an electric kiln would be about right. I’ll post on this kiln again once I get a burner to fire it with and some glaze tests set to go!
