Pottery Studio — Part 9

Last time there was a pottery kiln in a big box sitting on my driveway.  Nothing to do but get it installed and cranked up.  The box was fastened to a wooden pallet and too big to fit through the 36" front door, so the first step was to strip away all the extraneous packing material.  Then use some 2x4s to get it up on my hand truck and into the house. 

It was still too big to fit through the pottery studio door, so more cutting cardboard and foam was required.

The steel base was separate, so I put that in place and then brought in a piece of plywood and other wood to build temporary scaffolding to slide the kiln off the handtruck onto the base.  Judicious use of a prybar was required to do the magic lifting.  Took some time — it's a heavy beast!

You can't just plug these things in and press "start."  The shelves need to be coated with "kiln wash," a substance that keeps any molten glaze that drips off the pots from sticking to the shelves.  And critically, kilns need to be ventilated, either crudely by slightly propping open the lid, or better, with a special ventilation fan that draws small amounts of air in through small holes in the lid, and out through a tiny hole in the base — then outside.  The fan also pulls in some air from the room, so the air you breath is cleaner and cooler. 

The special ventilation fan looks like this installed:

The blower unit is mounted to the wall, and exhausts outside.  I used a 4" clothes dryer exhaust duct unit for the outside of the house (cutting a hole through the stucco), that has flaps that close when no air is being pushed through the vent. 

The smaller gray box is a relay that is controlled by the kiln's computer, turning the blower on and off when required.  The 3" flexible metal exhaust pipe in the photo attaches to a plenum on the bottom of the kiln.  A little air pulled down through the kiln, and more pulled from the room. 

The air circulating through the kiln evens out the heat, and takes away the contaminants from the glaze that are given off (you don't want stuff from one pot landing on its neighbor, affecting the color you worked so hard to achieve). 

The kiln ventilation unit exhausts some of the room air, but not enough to keep the room cool.  The kiln fires to temperatures in excess of 2000˚ F on the inside, and not surprisingly, the outside also gets pretty hot (even though I opted for the thicker 3" walls).  For that reason, I installed (early on in the remodel) an exhaust fan in the ceiling, leading to the attic.  I temporarily covered the top of the fan with a thick bat of insulation. 

I always knew I would need some sort of insulated hatch to close the fan opening when it was not needed (most of the time), but procrastinated until now.  In the photo above, the new wood pieces are a ledge for one side of the hatch to sit on, and a small piece of plywood on the other side for a barrel bolt to fit in.  The hatch itself would be 3/4" plywood with an inch of rigid foam fastened on top (with a another thin piece of plywood screwed through the insulation into the thick plywood).  I then decided I needed something to seal the edge of the fan to prevent air leakage, so added another piece of soft foam. 

At that point I realized I could have just attached the soft foam to the plywood and be done with it, but I wasn't going to rip it apart and start over.  Overkill, sure.  Here's the closed hatch over the fan.  (Needs another coat of paint.)

So with all of that out of the way, I was ready to run a test firing (no pots inside the kiln) per manufacturer instructions.  The firing burns the thin coating of oil off the heating coils and generally makes sure all is well, rather than risk ruining any new pots.  The firing was to the Cone 06 stage (1828˚), which is what I will use for the first (bisque) firing of new pots.  The second (glaze) firing that I use is to Cone 5 (2167˚).  Here's the kiln nearing the target temperature.

I'm now cleaning up the wheel room, getting ready to start making pots again.  Really need to make some more drawers in the pottery studio to get everything organized (still have only eight of the sixteen drawers made). 

The Drawer Factory

Okay, since my last post (on drawers), I've made seven more.  One for the bed base (now eight out of eleven done).  Two more shallow ones for the kitchen — one under the stainless steel counter, and a second one under the first one I made last time.

The other four were for the master bathroom vanity.  They are in a bay that also contains the sink drain, which limits how far back the drawers can extend (at least for the lower ones). 

Here are the carcasses installed (three dovetail made from solid cherry, and the larger one made from birch plywood). 

And here the mahogany fronts have been installed.  This particular mahogany is striped and darker than the plain mahogany I used for the edge trim, but I like the contrast. 

I'm not sure what drawers I will build next, as they are all needed — perhaps a few for each room.  I will also be starting to install bamboo flooring in the living room this week, so who knows what the next post will bring?