Wildcat Creek Brick Company

Saturday, July 31, 2010

New brick bottle kiln. The 'Monster'

My latest clay furnace is a small bottle updraft named 'Monster' by my daughter after an energy drink she says it looks like.

Ive wanted to experiment with a different design, hoping to gain easier firings and higher temps.

Just a bunch of firebricks surrounding an old cut up 55 gallon barrell. That surrounded by red brick.

It took me only 4.5 hours to reach 2000'F, and it could have went further if I pushed it. May have went too hot for the clay I was using for the test bricks inside.
Looks to be a real improvement so far though. I will post the results soon.

I pressed out 12 clay bricks last week just for this test firing today. Finished drying them in my electric kiln last night.

Heres a peek inside at the end. See the brick slumped over. Got too hot I think. Gonna have to slow down this beast and run it to 1850 - 1900'F max.

4 comments:

  1. Hey that looks great! I would LOVE to see a cut-away diagram of how you constructed it - maybe when you unload it? :D That's sort of the chimney-like shape I was thinking of building, glad to hear it worked so well for you.

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  2. Glad you liked it! I will post an update tommorrow if I get time. Yeah its a fire breathing monster.

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  3. Hi Richard,

    I love the kiln! I have always been fond of bottle shaped updrafts, I used to call my one my vertical anagama! Mine really went like a rocket, and I think it would have gone beyond the 2192 F that I would take it to. I would get to that in about 4.5 - 5 hours, having "held the kiln back" as much as I could in the early part of the firing. Nice to see your experiments going on.

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  4. Thanks Peter. It is an easy kiln to fire up. Just need to master the heat level in it. Yes, it seems to have like results with some of your bottle kiln experiments too.

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