Return of the Living Kiln

This week I’ve also been working on our other little kiln; this one is still set up as a down draft.  I took off about half the thickness of the soft brick on the walls in hopes that this will allow more airflow while firing which should allow the fuel to combust more efficiently and we might be able to reach much higher temperatures.  This is exciting because we might be able to glaze some work that has been sitting around.  I’m going to test what temperatures I can get with this kiln and the properly working burners, and then see what kinds of glazes we can make for that temperature range.

I’m also working on some large bowls that came out a few firings ago:

 

I started banding these bowls:

And next I will add some designs around the rims and a nice picture in the middle.  My idea for these bowls is to hang them on the wall, so I threw a catch on the back side so it will sit on a nail.  We’ll see how that works, but I think they will look nice hanging on a wall.

Major Burn…

I’ve wanted to get a new burner for our little propane kiln, because one of ours doesn’t work properly.  It puts out a reduced flame, meaning a very sluggish flame that puts out more smoke than heat.  So the other day I was going to order some fire blanket and a pair of raku tongs for a project Keturah thought of.  So I thought I would go ahead and buy a burner at the same time, figuring it would help the kiln fire faster and more evenly.  So I picked up a small venturi burner designed for burning liquid propane.  When I finally got the package, here’s a picture of what we received:

 

I wanted to test out the new burner so I put what I had in the kiln and started a bisque firing.  I started by placing a small propane torch on a five foot cord in the kiln and turned it on low for about an hour to preheat the work.  Then I add one of the venturi burners on low and remove the small torch, I leave it this way for a half hour and then I usually add the second burner.  When I went to add the second (new) burner it was doing the same thing the old burner was, a slow, reduced flame, after much nashing of teeth I started to think of what the problem could be.  I figured that there might be a clog in the line reducing the flow of gas, so I went to buy a new hose.  If it wasn’t the hose my next guess would have been the pressure regulator, but when I hooked up the new hose and lit the burner it burst to life with a satisfying growl.  So now I believe I have three working venturi burners, I still need to test the old burner, but I think that it will work just fine now that the hose has been replaced.  Once I added the second burner to the kiln it finished in record time.  It usually takes about 6 hours to fire this little kiln to bisque temperature (1850f/1010c) which is a respectable time and one I’m used to with electric kilns.  But this time with both burners working properly it only took about four hours!  So that’s pretty cool, I’m really excited to have a properly working kiln, now to make some new work to  put into it…

Harvest Time (Small Scale)

We have been drying out some of our onion flowers in some paper bags so we could harvest the seeds.  Today I sat down and sorted through the detritus and picked out the seeds.  Here are a few pictures of the progression of flower to seed:

Onion flower still growing.

Dried Onion Flower after a month in a paper bag.

A Pile of seeds from about 6 flowers.

We plan to plant most of the seeds this fall in hopes of a big onion harvest in the spring.  We’ll see how it goes.  We also plan to let our lettuce, cilantro, carrots, leeks, basil, rosemary, dill, parsley, and sage go to seed, as well as collecting seed from the rest of our plants.

Compost II

We threw this compost container together the other night (which is why the pictures are so dark). We took this idea from our friend Andy, because our other composter wasn't big enough for all of our compost and this was really easy to put up.

What we did was hammer in about 6 stakes in a roughly circular shape.

And then wrapped some chicken wire around it to keep all the compost together.  Later we'll go back and cut the tops off of the stakes and start to fill it with compost.  We also put some hay down in our garden, mostly over the soaker hose, in hopes that it will help keep the plants moist and cool during the summer heat.