Friday, January 9, 2009

progress

I'm making some good progress on the kiln. It took me awhile to get the firebox sorted out, the hard brick are a 1/16" difference in height than the softbrick. That doesn't sound like much but 4 courses up it would be a 1/4" off so this has to be taken care of right off the bat. Once I got up to the floor level things sped up a bit. It doesn't look all that big in the photo but thing is monstrous to me. When its finished it will over 5' wide, 8' long and over 8" from the ground to the top of the chamber(though the chamber itself will be just over 5' inside). I've never built or fired a kiln this large before, when I was in college it was a small program so the kilns were small. I suppose it will be weird to commit that much work to a kiln at first.




Nothing left of the old guy but the bracing for the door. I kind of like that stokehole door floating there in space, I may leave it for awhile. The swinging doors will not be making an appearance on the new kiln, I'll have to kick it old school and brick the door up.

3 comments:

EF said...

Are you sure you are up for bricking up the door? You really shouted the glories of the door on the old kiln and how great it was for your back/body and now you are coping-out for additional manual labor? Now seems to be the best time, unless you foresee yourself dismantling and adding this on. What does the wife and family say? Seriously.

Ron said...

That's gonna be a nice kiln. I'm sure you'll fill it right up. I never minded bricking up the door. I always had softbrick doors too which weren't too difficult to work with.

brandon phillips said...

well...ef(?), the door had its downsides. it stuck all the time and the necessary bracing to hold it up is a pain in the butt to put together. the main reason though is that my welder crapped out on me while building the first kiln and then when i rewired the workshop i didn't wire it to run a welder because 6/3 wire is expensive!(the old stuff wasn't grounded and the coating was cracking, safety first!) the door will be softbrick(lightweight) and will be placed on a stand next to the opening(3 feet off the ground) so things will be as ergonomic as possible. hopefully i won't be firing every month so i think it'll be ok.