KILN BUILDING
The kind of kilns that I have built in the past has gone from experimenting with bonfires to pits. They all give a good effect and work, but lately I have been presenting workshops at some major festivals and a few local schools whereby I constructed an up-draft oil drum kiln. This type of kiln is built with an oil drum as the kiln base which is put on a stand horizontally. At the back of the drum I would put a dozen or so holes through the drum. The front would be the fire box which is made out of a mix of clay bricks and fire brick placed all round the bottom of the drum. Then I simply cover the drum with a layer of newspaper covered in slip (slip is just watered down clay into a liquid).
After this I cover the drum and bricks in a cob mix which is a mixture of clay, hay, mud and water for insulation. Once the drum is full the door of the kiln is made with more clay bricks as air tight as possible, then it’s just a case of fuelling the fire box with wood for at least ten hours at a slow rate so it doesn’t take the kiln temperature up too quickly. This type of kiln has about an 80% pass rate I would say and is good fun to build as long as you don’t mind getting a bit muddy and Smokey.
The kind of kilns that I have built in the past has gone from experimenting with bonfires to pits. They all give a good effect and work, but lately I have been presenting workshops at some major festivals and a few local schools whereby I constructed an up-draft oil drum kiln. This type of kiln is built with an oil drum as the kiln base which is put on a stand horizontally. At the back of the drum I would put a dozen or so holes through the drum. The front would be the fire box which is made out of a mix of clay bricks and fire brick placed all round the bottom of the drum. Then I simply cover the drum with a layer of newspaper covered in slip (slip is just watered down clay into a liquid).
After this I cover the drum and bricks in a cob mix which is a mixture of clay, hay, mud and water for insulation. Once the drum is full the door of the kiln is made with more clay bricks as air tight as possible, then it’s just a case of fuelling the fire box with wood for at least ten hours at a slow rate so it doesn’t take the kiln temperature up too quickly. This type of kiln has about an 80% pass rate I would say and is good fun to build as long as you don’t mind getting a bit muddy and Smokey.
