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^10 HEATING QUESTION IN HOME MADE KILN

Hello All: I am building a small kiln that I hope to take up to ^10. I am using an oil burner to get up that high but it heats too quickly at the start so I plan to use a smaller propane burner at first to hold it at about 100c for a while and raise the temp slowley after that, then at some point switch over to the oil burner. the oil burner heats up at aboutb3deg per minute up to

800c then drops to 2 deg per min then heats slower as it gets hotter. What I need to know is how hot should I take it using the propane before I switch to the oil burner? The kiln is a ten brick circumference by 5 rings tall, burner blows in from side of bottom ring under a shelf floor that sits at 1 brick high. it has a 6" hole in the lib with a broken shelf for a damper. Thanks, bri
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bri
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Bri Can you slow the rate of flow for the oil, and thereby regulate the temp increase? Maybe a valve that you close and open as needed? How do you slow the burner down, or is it an "all or nothing" arrangement?

3 degrees per hour does not seem like an awful fast rate of increase once you get past say 600 C.

Wayne Seidl

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wayneinkeywest

Reply to
Bri

Let's see...water boils at around 220F (212F, which is 100C, but you have to allow for the pot to get to temp as well), so you need to keep it slow to there, and the quartz inversion happens at

1063F (573C) so you want to keep it slower there. I would say that once you reach 600C you can give it the gun and let it go. Will that weed burner let you get the kiln to 600C by itself? If not, I wouldn't fire the oil burner up until I hit at least 100C.

Once the quartz inversion happens, you can ramp up pretty quickly, depending on your clay body. I've seen pots blow (crack) during the quartz inversion, because of the amount of silica in the body, either as ingredient or as grog, so I'm always real leery up til 600C. But that's just me. I've had other people tell me I must be crazy. If you don't have access to a pyrometer, you can place a witness cone (022 large and small Orton and Seger, 04 Harrison) and when it goes over completely, you've hit quartz inversion.

Hope that helps, Wayne Seidl

Reply to
wayneinkeywest

Wayne: Thanks for the info. I don't know if the weed burner will take it to

600c but it probably will. I took it to 350 with it very quickly when I was testing. If it can't make it then I can use two of them since they are only $15 when on sale. I was messing with the oil burner last night and found that it makes a lot of smoke at first until it gets to about 400c so I th>
Reply to
Bri

OK: good news, yesterday I fired a load of ^04 stuff and it worked fine other than I was running out of time, "bed time". Istarted with theweed burner that took it up to 350c, then switched to the oil burner up to 1005c then I added the weed burner again and it shot up to

1077 very quickly. The 04 cone touched the shelf but stayed arched so it all worked fine. Next test should be a ^10 load so I think I,ll need some extra propane for that run. The toughest part was holding it under 100c for a couple hours. Thanks, Bri
Reply to
bri

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