Thursday, December 5, 2013

Kiln Nearly Finished


An iron frame, little paint, a little Spackle chinking, and the kiln is nearly finished. The bracing is necessary because the bricks expand unevenly from the great heat inside. The "iron" here is actually thin strips of 1/32" basswood. The expansion causes cracks in the wall that have to be chinked before each firing session to prevent heat loss. In real life, the clay chinking also gets fired, gets loose, and need to be replaced. In this case, the air dry clay caused some separations and one lovely crack.

The kiln is sitting on a "concrete" base made from part of a foam plastic egg carton. Love those egg cartons, both plastic and paper. The inside of the oven is the original brick-painted paper. It is not easily seen and mimics the outside enough that it works for me. I wasn't too excited about trying to paint bricks inside, especially since I'd glued the pots inside. 

The base will be set down a bit when installed. In these photos it is sitting on top of the grass sheets. Next step: installing the grass.

1 comment:

  1. I was interested in how it was going to turn out but it looks great, Im going to have to try your technique on a few of my project ideas :)

    Hugs
    Marisa :)

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