Over the last couple of days I have put the kiln together in the
studio. This is still far short of finished, but the structure of the
brick and floor and fibre is in place.
It is now actually starting to really look like a kiln. Z made pots while I put the bricks together on Thursday. This required a lot of blowing with the air compressor, trying to get extraneous dust off the bricks, and fitting them in place. The floor isn't perfect, so it took a long time getting the bricks in place and seated nicely.
There's not much more to say about this. Just carrying the bricks to the studio and setting them in place. A little bit of sliding back and forth and making sure they sit right. And making sure that I had them right side up ... I screwed one up. The groove was pointing down. Stupid.
Today I cut the fibre into 24 inch by 28 inch strips, and lined the outside of the kiln.
To keep them in place on the outside of the kiln I used some masking
tape. A good choice as I'll explain later. The tape stuck well to the
fibre, and wrapped around the top of the kiln, and held the fibre well
onto the side of the kiln.
If you haven't cut fibre before (I hadn't) it's very easy. I just set up a little station which allowed me to easily measure 28 inch lengths and cut. I just lined up a fence after marking with a felt pen.
Just like the M-Board, this stuff is very irritable. Long sleeves, latex gloves and a mask. Mandatory.
After all of the fibre was cut and attached I got out the aluminium sheeting that I got from Main Sheet Metal.
Looking pretty spiffy. This was actually quite a pain in the ass. I
should have gotten 108 inches of sheet metal. I got 107 which is a
touch smaller than required, but I over estimated just how hard it is
to compress the fibre. 108 might have been better, but I think after
welding on the clamps I'll be able to tighten it up well. After
wrapping the aluminium I was able to just pull the masking tape out
from between the metal and the fibre. Very simple. It worked great to
keep the fibre in place while I wrapped it with the metal.
The really cool thing is that as you tighten this up, you can reach in the kiln and tap the bricks by the joints, and they pivot nicely and match up. Tighten, tap, tighten, tap ... rinse repeat, you get really nice joints (if you're angles are right). It's quite a lot of fun.
My plan is to have a welder attach everything, so I won't rivet anything to this skin. I'm going to contract a welder to attach everything after I'm all ready.
Not sure when I'm going to do the wiring. Tomorrow I will start to lay out the roof bricks.
I just wanted to leave off with this picture:
5.5 inches of insulation! I'm very excited at this point. The best on
the market (for my scale work) is the shimpo kilns which are 4
inches. They are great kilns, but very expensive.
Damage so far:
| elements and stuff | $200 |
| bricks | $450 |
| 6 tubes cement | $36 |
| steel base | $27 |
| 2 sheets M-Board | $100 |
| 107x28 inches 20 gauge aluminium | $90 |
| total | $903 |
