I finally got the hinge on Wednesday, and set about immediately to write this page. It's quite hefty. I would say it weighs about 20 lbs. I elected to design it such that it would be mounted to the lid, and to a structure which was bolted to the wall. This is different from most kiln lids. The hing usually is also attached to the kiln body. But because my lid is so heavy, I didn't want to stress the body of the kiln too much.
The first step was attaching it to the kiln lid. At first I was very concerned about alignment, and getting it just right, but then I realized that this wasn't necessary. I could just tweak the skin. All I had to do was bolt it to the skin relatively accurately, and then just move the aluminium skin a tiny bit to get it perfect. That made it considerably easier. Also, I elected to use bolts instead of rivets. Moreover, I put a second sheet of 22 gauge steel between the aluminium and the washers. I had it, so I thought I may as well.
At this point, I thought I was home free. I just used some more of
that cedar which was ideal, thick, and wide. I anchored a large slab
to the studs and a smaller piece to the hinge, I used lag bolts for
the hinge side, but elected to go with 4" #8 screws. Lots of
them. Between the two I used three pieces of 2x6 for bracing, and a
length piece to secure it to. I seemed good to go. Unfortunately, the
kiln lid when lifted and lowered, put too much stress on the back
bricks. They kept getting pushed back into the fibre and out of
alignment. And they kept getting damaged.
I wasn't exactly sure what to do. If the hinge worked perfectly (and I had it mounted perfectly) it shouldn't really do that. But I knew that the sheer weight of it and the flexibility of the wood means that perfection is quite unlikely. I tweaked my wood mount a bit so that the hinge was slightly open. Not a good solution since it means the lid will be pulling against the screws when down and probably making it looser over time. This did solve the problem though.
The bricks were still getting pushed out of alignment a little
though. And that bothered me greatly. That's when I had a brilliant
idea. I cut a one inch wide circular section of M-Board to fit between
the skin and the brick. This allowed the tension of the skin to
directly apply itself to the back bricks without being absorbed by the
compressible fibre. This worked perfectly, and I was happy. I also had
to trim the skin a bit so that it didn't dig into the M-Board.
Unfortunately I didn't take a picture of the M-Board circular section at this point. I thought I could always take it later. You'll find out later why that wasn't true. I'm a bit behind in putting up these updates. So read on to find out about the M-Board.
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 |
| Electrical box | $50 |
| Table leg | $5 |
| Hinge | $250 |
| total | $1473 |
