Sounds like the title of a Miles Davis album. I finally got back to working on the kiln today. My plan was to mortar the floor that I had previously roughed out. Unfortunately the mortar that I had for the job, Super 3000 is not the right product. I can see it working fine for mortaring rowlock courses, but for doing a floor it just doesn't work. The mortar has zero strength until it has been heat cured making it useless for my application. Luckily, I talked to the local kiln builder (I should have done this first rather than trust my pottery supply store) and he pointed me to Superfine (I can't find a link) by Duquesne. He mentioned that Sol Maya a local glass blower had a bunch that he could probably spare. I headed over there, and Sol was happy enough to get rid of some of his extra. All in all, a very good score. I ran a small test with the Superfine mortar, it works GREAT. You can hardly pull the bricks apart after only 10 sec. (Super 3000 by contrast never really stuck at all.) So, I didn't mortar today.
Instead I decided to cut the element grooves in the wall brick. This of course meant more use of the table saw and the masonary disk. I'm happy that (I think) this is the last dusty step. I simply put two fences on either side of the grinding blade.
The amount of space between them is important, Kanthal indicates that the grooves should be at least 1.25 times as large as the elements. My elements were wound on a 3/8th inch mandral, making them 5/8th inch in diameter. This means that around 3/4-7/8 inch wide groove should be good. Meaning I wanted a little less than 3.5 inches between the two fences. It took a lot of fiddling to get them in a good spot. The blade should be tilted (I set it at 25 degrees), so you have to play with the fences so that the groove is cut in a good spot.
The process was simply to run the brick through the gap between the two fences, once against each side for two grooves. Then one more time, this time sliding the brick laterally back and forth grinding out the angled dado.
Dust collection today was pretty easy. I spent some time and built a little catchment from a small plastic planting pot. This sat between the two fences, and my shop-vac was connected to the back with some tuck tape. It worked very well. Plus I made sure that I had a collection bag under the saw. I ended up with about a kilogram of dust and chunks in the bag and most of the dust coming off the blade in the vacuum. It bears repeating, spend time making sure that you have good dust collection.
Of course I had to mock up some courses of the kiln to see how the grooves looked. I think it's really starting to look like a kiln! I did a bisque firing in my old Olympic as I worked, and as I'm typing this. I'm hoping that it's the last firing that I will do in that kiln.
Tomorrow I will mortar!
