Building the Kiln
The Build
I found free old boiler bricks at a company that repairs them. They gave me 5 pallets of 10″x11″x6″ brick, so I designed and built a modified Bourry box sprung arch kiln. Chuck Hines came by and corrected my design in a number of ways.
We got a bunch of steel from the local metal recycling shop, and found a 30 cubic foot soda kiln that was on it’s last legs, also free, with an outside insulating layer of insulating fire brick. I had to buy a like 80 more, so total cost was under $3000.
Firing lessons over time
We have fired 7 times now and are getting the hang of it
post pics here
Design considerations
The original buttressing steel was insufficient, the arch actually started to spread the walls and bend the steel. A quick trip to the metal recycler for much bigger steel allowed us to pull it back together
- Post picks here
- link to design docs here