Pics of hot things

Pics from the firing this weekend... all at bout 2300F. I got to 2300 in about 20 hours, kept it there for 9 hours so that I could feed in more wood (to generate more ash to melt on pots), and let it get to I think 2378F before shutdown. Burned a good brush pile and my XMass tree.

Looking through a kiln spy hole- you see shelves, and "cones". Cones melt at different "heat work"- much like the pop up in a turkey. They are all melted here- (cones 010, 6, 10, 11, 12)




It is so bright (with dangerous rays)that you shouldn't look in without eye protection. You see the top of a "cut sided" sake/shot cup.



Same cup- closer up



This shot is taken looking through a hole in the chimney, through the exit flue from the ware chamber. The hole in the chimney serves 2 purposes- 1) allows me to start a fire in the chimney base to heat it up and get the draft going (the firebox is maybe 6 feet away), and 2) acts as a passive damper. If I want to slow the chimney draw, I pull out a brick or 2 (or 3) and the chimney draws some of it's flow through this hole rather than the rest of the kiln.



A closeup of a mug made for a friend

These pics were all taken by my friend Heather Gwinn

Here's me next to the firebox door. At some point we cut the air way back, and the gasifying wood creates a back pressure- when it hits air- fire blows out of all sorts of places.


Here are those cones before they melted- actually- it looks like one of them is melted at the right.


The firebox door is a 1/4" plate of steel with kaowool backing- this is the connector for the counterweight (old lifting weights on a pulley)


A sake cup


same cup- more fire

More Heather pics

At higher temps I shove wood right into the ware chamber for a blast of ash to melt at the top of the kiln


Fire coming up past the sidestoke area


There is a "collection box" before the chimney- air from passive dampers mixes with unburnt gas for a secondary burn. Longer camera exposure shows cinder trails


More


More pics

Thanks- great place for Mothers day gifts- LOL! We went through about 3 cord of mostly pine (some oak, birch, etc), plus a good sized brush pile

Exhaust


Exhaust taken with flash (dave in pic)

Chimney is high-heat firebrick (2.5x4.5x9") (much higher rating than is used in normal woodstove), cemented with a home made mix of fire clay and sand/grog. I put and insulated (kaowool/flashing/metal roofing) chase around it so that it wouldn't heat up the wooden beams in the shed. Ya, very clean- LOL

For those that wanted shots of the stuff cooled...
Kiln before unloading- everything is on refractory shelves (nitrogen bonded silicon carbide). Big sculpture in the back is made of tiny pots- part of my friend's senior project. There was supposed to be a few more big ones, but he was told that wood fire wasn't the way to go for the others during a critique. We were left with a short load of pots. I hope this doesn't come out sideways...



Better shot of it- in the upper left corner you see a place where I can pull out a brick and shove wood in across the bricks at left to give ash and flame up there



Work of several people



Most of these are mine. You can see the melted cones there that I had a hot picture of them earlier.



Tiles- these are color tests for a good friend (and Hearth member) that may want some for his hearth rebuild. I LOVE how these came out.



Sake cups- Potter from Hearth sent me a glaze recipe that came out pissa- I will be adding it to my palette.






Mug- nice glaze run to the foot. New tenmoku glaze for me



Bottle was fired on its side so that the ash drips sideways



Bird houses. People love these.

Thanks guys. The bird houses are just done in a blue glaze, and I put them in a less "ashy" part of the kiln. They need glaze all over to limit water getting into the clay and breaking it in the winter, so thy are fired on sea shells. The shells leave an imprint and crumble apart after the fire..

Many potters hate blue, because it's popular and they get sick of it. I like blue.

An oil drip system is real easy to construct- some have 3 pieces of channel iron arranged in sloping steps so that the oil drips from one piece to the next as it burns. A very simple one, however, just uses a single thick plate with a very small air gap above it. When the chimney starts drawing well, the air velocity over the plate is quite high, causing the oil on the hot plate to vaproize quite well. Simple ball valves are used to control flow.

I may add a removable oil drip system to do "bisque" fires (efficient way to get rid of used oil. as well as fryolator grease... neighborhood will all be hungry) to a much lower temp.