Adventures in Pottery, Pt. 2

So, without access to any pottery facilities, I decided to build my own kiln. I followed the same vein as the previous video on YouTube, in the hopes I’d find an easy firing technique. Unfortunately, the amount of ease was related to how much land I had to disturb. My kiln needs to be portable, or at least able to be taken apart. I also want to fire using solid fuels like wood and charcoal because they are readily available and affordable to me. I decided to build an updraft kiln because it was simplest with my constraints, even though it would require more fuel and a longer time under fire than other types.

I built the kiln using clay construction bricks. Since I did not need a to fire the clay to a high temperature to be useful, these were theoretically sufficient as insulators for the kiln.

Fuel gets pushed deep inside the kiln, and the long tunnel creates a draft which forces the air to flow in one direction.

A fan blows oxygen rich air in, increasing the flame temperature to somewhere around 1200 degrees Celsius (guessing by the color).

I used all my fuel very quickly. Despite firing for two and a half hours, and using a fan to increase the heat through oxygenation, the kiln never got hot enough to burn off the carbon. This means, the pots remain in a fragile state.

Carbon soot and wood ash coats the pots.

Had the temperature been hot enough these would produce a ceramic ding when tapped.

I am going to redesign the kiln to hopefully achieve a better firing temperature within my constraints of portability and fuel.