closer to fire

Sat, 24 Jul 2004 02:28:23 GMT

The kiln continues to become more and more a reality under our hands each day. It is so exciting to create something so large and so permanent.

For a bit of history, I currently teach ceramics and design classes at Greenville Technical College in South Carolina. Last spring a private beneficiary provided the funds to build a high temperature gas kiln at the satellite campus where I teach. As I am the only ceramics instructor in the small Visual Arts department, it fell to me to design and teach a kiln building class, and to construct the kiln. It has been quite an opportunity as well as a challenge!

I have designed the kiln from the ground up, which included finding and clearing a site on the campus; pouring a concrete pad and erecting an aluminum shed-type awning; praying; researching the pros and cons of different kiln types and firing procedures; establishing a "budget" for the project (really hard- but remarkably we're not over budget-yet!); ordering (and haggling for) the best priced brick, burners and shelves; praying; having brick, burners, and shelves delivered on the back of a semi backward up a hill to our site; unloading 3 palettes of brick (about 1000 lbs each) with the help of a big black guy named Willy and a cantankerous palette jack; praying some more; many wonderful and torturous afternoons-into-nights spent through "I-can't fell my toes" coldcoldcold in early January, through spring rains when my students assumed we didn't have class even though we were under a shed, through scorching July heatwaves like today.

The kiln has grown on its cinder block base, up a high-duty firebrick pad, through eighteen courses of insulating soft brick walls, to a sprung arch made over a wooden arch form constructed by my brother and me on a weekend in late April. We have gone through 25 gallons of sairset mortar and 200 lbs. of fireclay, 2000 insulating bricks and, 250 hard bricks, unmeasurable quantities of alumnia oxide, grog, peropholite, lots of prayers, a chop saw blade, a mallet, 2 or 3 handsaws, a couple of hammers and chisels, and several formerly decent pairs of jeans and boots. All of us have sacrificed kneecaps, cuticles, eyes, hands, and skin to falls, drying mortar, blowing brick dust and persistent kiln dwelling insects like muddobbers and centipedes, not to mention the abundant variety of crevice dwelling spiders! I have also learned more than I ever wanted to know about the bureaucratics of school business policies and charitable tax-deductible contributions!

Last week we had the steel frame installed and yesterday we removed the arch form and held our breath, in anticipation that months of work would come crashing down. It didn't- (probably held aloft by all those prayers!) Today we were able to finish the front of the kiln and the door. We are now officially out of soft brick, except for odd shaped pieces, mishaps of the chop saw!

We lack only to finish the back of the kiln, the chimney, and to connect the burners and install the shelves. Then finally, we can play with some fire!

my kiln

Thu, 15 Jul 2004 03:23:09 GMT

Today we put up the steel on my kiln and it became like the Velveteen Rabbit.

muddiver26

closer to fire

my kiln