Friday, July 10, 2009

Have we been here before?

Back in 1981-1982 we built our first kiln. It was all hard brick and ate gas like a pig. We decided we needed a soft brick kiln for two reasons. One it needed to fire more efficiently and two we wanted to get more pots out at a time- production was the name of the game for us then.
So we built the big kiln- 1986.
Now it is 2009 and I don't know here the years went.
But we have dug out pictures of the first kiln we built and Mark has been reproducing it in soft brick.


Mark, being the great pack rat that he is, had stored the steel away in one of the out buildings.

He is now reproducing an arch,that is long gone, and cleaning burners.

Our thoughts on this kiln are, we will be able to fire more glaze test along with smaller turn around of the old glazes.
The large kiln does not allow quick turn around.
And- the work and we have changed. When I look at filling the old kiln I have to take a breath.
In fact I take that breath today- 80 cubic feet is a lot of pottery.
The small kiln is about 20 cubic feet. A baby compared to the big bad boy!


We hope to have this baby out for a test drive in the next month.



5 comments:

Linda Starr said...

Wow, that seems really quick to build the kiln. Can't wait for the maiden voyage.

Anonymous said...

very exciting... 80 cu. ft. is a lot of pots indeed, look forward to hearing about the virgin firing

Barbara said...

Very beautifully done. Love to see the arch.

cookingwithgas said...

Hi Linda- we started this kiln- the foot print last July- the fire stopped us from doing any work on it until the past month or so.
Yep- 80 cubic feet is too Much these days Jim too old for that anymore!
Barbara I will post the arch soon I hope!

Gary's third pottery blog said...

man, you are like pioneering superheros or something---how do people develop the initiative and drive to just build stuff like that?????