Tuesday, December 29, 2009
The Wood Fired Kiln
We finished building the Manabigama near the end of October with the help of Cam Stewart, potter friend, kiln builder and amazing bag pipe player and telephone/email support from John Thies. My husband Wayne & I fired for the first time on October 31st with the help of Cam and another potter, Susanne Ashmore. It was an exciting event - fast, even firing and pretty good results. A second firing in November gave some interesting pots but over-fired at the front so some fine tuning is required.
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Nice kiln. I'm looking to build a kiln and have just discovered this design - I'm very excited about it. It looks perfect. How are you finding it now? Have you fired again? How was it building the kiln?
ReplyDeleteThe kiln is very beautiful. The building took longer than John takes when building them during workshops but then he's built many. We took probably 3-4 weeks, not working 8 hours every day. There are lots of little details, like the stoke hole door, the metal bracing etc that adds time at the end. I think you could build the kiln in 2 weeks with help. The adobe coating is hard work (mixing in a wheelbarrow) and needs at least 3 people - 1 to mix and 2 to apply - and took us about 6 hours. I'll be firing again at the beginning of March and plan to change the stoking rhythm and speed of firing to keep the front from overheating. Apparently no one else has had this problem so it may be the type of wood and/or the stoking rhythm. It's a little more difficult to get used to than my old wood kiln but the results are much more exciting.
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