Test run of my first water wheel.

I placed the water wheel I built into the streambed to test it out. Work out very well with only a little head pressure to turn it. I will need to make a proper raceway for it to achieve usefull power. But its fun to watch it turn endlessly.

Here is a short video of it in motion. Quality is poor, from my cell phone. I will get better vids soon.

My electric kiln works great!

I have used my electric kiln today for the first time. Everything went smoothly. About 8 hrs to make 2000'F. The clays have much more reds to them, save the one creek clay brick I fired. That one may need to go to a higher temp. My first experience with electric kilns. This one has a humm or buzz sound when the elements are being electrified. Guess thats normal. Pulls about 12 amps when one coil is on, 24 amps when they both are up and running at 240v AC.

Whats easy about this, comming from wood firing, no wood stoking!!!! Dont get me wrong, I like the connection with the earth and wood firing. But sometimes its nice to just plug it in and let it buzz for 8 hrs with less effort. Lets see how good I feel when I get my electric bill! lol

I am next gonna fire a bunch of clay tiles for a house project. I will let you know how it goes.

Green energy from my creek.

One of my many 'other' projects is this water wheel ive been building. My plan is to put it into a water chute I will build in my creek along with a dam. If I can get this to work reasonably well, it should have enough power to spin a small generator. Depends on several things how well it will function for me.
If I can build enough head pressure at my dam to move the water down the chute forcefully.
What kind of speed will the wheel turn at and with how much torque?
Will it do as well once under load from a generator under load as well?

Specifics:

36" dia wheel

28" wide

1.5" output shaft dia.

More clay tiles fired. Keeping away from reduction in wood firing.

I fired some more homemade clay tiles a few weeks ago in my wood kiln. Just hadn't gotten around to posting anything about it till this morning. Pretty uneventfull firing and results were ok.

As you can see the colors vary depending on where they were in the kiln and the paths the flames took. I was hoping for a bit more reds from the clay in the tiles. No salt glazing here. Looking more for a dark terra cotta red. The attempt was to keep away from strong reduction so as not to darken them and pull to much oxygen out of the iron oxides. It kinda worked, but I think it will require a trade in order to get more deep reds. By keeping reduction in the kiln down I also cripple some of my peak temperature by stoking less fuel. So in order to get enough 'heat work' done to the clay I must lengthen the firing time in the neutral and oxidizing enviroment I create inside the kiln.

You can compare the tiles to 'real' red brick directly behind them.

Got myself an electric kiln!

Hey I found a great deal on an old Duncan electric kiln off of craigslist. So now I have this to play with too. Yippie!!!!!

Making some more clay tiles.

Im still always on the lookout for common objects that can be used to make cool patterns on my tiles.

This old water valve handle was a throw away item now reborn as a clay tile stamp.

Compressed earth bricks, back to the drawing board.

Its been almost a year since I constructed the chimney of the aluminum furnace out of CEBs. Indiana has a harsh winter season with more than a few freeze/thaw cycles. This is the result of exposure to that bitter winter moisture!

Spalling of many of the faces of the bricks due to freezing after moisture intrusion.

Notice how the mortar has held up better than the clay body of the bricks.

My initial hypothesis is that I skimped too much on the cement content of the clay mix for the bricks. The higher level of cement would likely add to the moisture resistance of the bricks by lowering their water absobtion rate. That is critical in outdoor enviroments where water and freezing are combined threats.

Not sure what I will do about this yet. I do know that any unfired CEBs that I make in the future will have a higher cement quantity in the clay mix. Or I may skip the cement and just fire my CEBs in a clamp kiln to vitrify them and gain the waterproofing needed for my Indiana climate.

The aluminum furnace chimney may be torn down and rebuilt, not sure yet about that either.

Playing around with low fire glaze.

I bought some used glazes off of Ebay awhile back and have been trying them out to see how they effect my clays. Some glazes turn out very clear, while others add some interesting colors to the result. All of them are in the low fire range at cone 04 to 05 by the instructions on the bottles.

This platter has a nice glossy wet look.

This rough bowl ended up blue with some reds in spots. I am gonna play some more with this one.

This is a combo glaze job on the candlestick holder. Blue down the flutes and throat with a bit of red on the raised parts.

This one has some redish spots on it that the photo dosn't give justice too.

Dont know why the picture flipped like this. The little square bottle is something new im trying.

New stuff for the kiln.

My new pyrometer thermocouples came in yesterday! Thanks once again for Ebay. Ive been fighting using crappy old thermocouples and even went as far as making my own. Funny think was I learned alot about how they are made and work. Having these should make my kiln temp monitoring a bit easier now.

8mm type K thermocouples

Ive also made up some new clay mix. Just waiting for warmer temperatures and motivation to make some new pottery. I have some new ideas I want to try. Thinking about small clay bottles.

4 parts field clay, 1 part glass dust

Fire and snow.

Heavy snowfall tuesday. Spent the day on another 6.5 hour quickfire of the kiln. Salt glazed the last hour and half. Very good day watching the snow fall while gathering firewood and stoking the kiln.

I am very excited about the heat this firebox can generate in the small chamber.

I actually have to hold back on stoking speed sometimes. Thats still a new one for me.

And it can make alot of really black smoke if I put to much in to fast.

When I start in the morning, I use a kerosene heater in the barn for warmth. But after about an hour, the heat off the kiln becomes plenty in itself. So I turn off the heater for the rest of the day.

There were two pots on the left from the last firing that I refired to get a better glaze effect. I put in a few tiles too. They came out nice.

I liked this pot and plate.

Pottery photos from latest wood kiln firing.

Here are the pots from the latest firing. My focus has been on improving my firing to a useful level where the resulting pots would be glazed fully. That is now possible. My next effort will be to improve the shape and style of the pottery to a more pleasing and useful level. The shapes may be crude, but the salt glaze is really getting close. Im excited like a little kid!


The darker pots are that way because of the naturally dug Cutler clay they are made of. There is a low percentage of glass dust in these.

This next little pot with a handle is made from Flora dug clay that has a slightly higher glass dust content than the ones above. It cracked becase it dryed out too fast in an earlier bisque firing.

The next ones are all Flora dug clay with a near 50 percent addition of bottle glass dust.

These are the two that were nearest the firebox flue. The heat was too much for them. I think that the high level of glass dust in them made the melting point lower for them. I think from now on I will either fire entirely one type of clay mix or the other. No more mixing the types in a single firing. Its too hard to comprimise between them on the firing needs. Obviously the higher glass dust clay bodies need a lower temp or shorter firing time than the near pure clay bodies do.

Heres a cool before and after photo set from the kiln to compare.

Huge success with pottery kiln modifications.

My kiln rebuild was the best thing I could have done. I am starting to realize just how gentle the balance is during a firing. All the variables have to be addressed and satisfied in order to create the best possible conditions for the fire to thrive. Expert I am not, but I am gaining on understanding how it works.

From what I can tell so far, I have gained alot on maximum temperature. I actually melted at least one pot into dripping gooo! I for the first time used cones. Not the correct ones, but close enough to get an idea. I bought an odd assortment of cones from ebay. I placed an 017, 016 , and a 6 near the spy brick. The 017 went first, then the 016. Then finally the 6 bent over. I melted all of them by the time I was ready to finish stoking the firebox. My pyrometer thermocouple is used and abused. It reported around 2000' deg F then failed. Then my front most pot in the chamber near the firebox flue started sagging down!

I thru a steel fitting into the ware chamber to see if it would melt. It glowed but didnt melt.

Notice the color progression from orange to yellow! Getting hotter.

Look at the clay gooo dripping down into the firebox from the chamber above.