At the same time I decided to build a kiln, I was building my log cabin. I've always like log structures but the cabin was the first log structure I ever built. I had worked out problems dealing with logs when I built the cabin which gave me confidence when I built the kiln shed after. These projects took time for me. Construction would happen in the blocks of time that I wasn't throwing, firing, and showing.
As all of this was happening, I was gathering materials for the kiln and kiln shed; like the bricks, tin, lumber, shelving and kiln furniture. All of those things showed up when I needed it. My bricks for example, they came from a demolished brick kiln located in Sanford, North Carolina. Each brick was hand moved, palletized, re-moved, and then cleaned with a hammer before being laid into the kiln. I think I picked up each brick ten times --that's if there were no problems. But, I didn't have to pay anything for them. If I bought them new it would have been $4 a brick and this is a 10,000 brick kiln which would have cost minimum $40,000 just for the brick not including other materials.
I bought the property where I would build my kiln in 2013. The property is in Moore County and is special to me because it's close to where W. H. Chriscoe's house and pottery was. He is my great-great-grandfather and one of the original five Seagrove Potters.
After the cabin was built, I was able to focus my construction efforts on the kiln shed which began in the summer of 2014. This kiln and shed is an evolution of all of the kilns I've fired over the years. I had the time to design it exactly how I wanted.
I want to share my progress of the kiln construction. It's been quite the undertaking for me. The following series of posts and photos show the progression of the build.
In October of 2015, I began to move earth and construct the arch of the kiln. I wanted to try something different for my arch.
Chain and catenary arch construction is done by hanging a chain to trace the shape that it makes to build the arch. That makes a strong arch but it'll eventually fail, collapsing, in the bottom third of the wall.
A barrel creates an arch that is any part of a circle. When it's initially built, it will still be a curved arch, but once it's fired, everything will expand and the top will flatten out in cooling and eventually fall in.
A barrel creates an arch that is any part of a circle. When it's initially built, it will still be a curved arch, but when fired, everything will expand and the top will flatten out in cooling and eventually fall in.
The point for me, was to find an arch design that's in between the catenary and barrel design. I found that bending a pipe will create a line right between the two. I think it will be a stronger arch--I may have created a new problem too but we'll see!
I've never seen the arch building technique that I've used done before and I'm confident it will work. I spent several months working out the details of my arch design on my own and decided to go for it.
I had already almost completely planned the kiln by this point, however I did end up spending a lot of time working on the depth and steps to ensure the arch was not out of the ground. I did not want the arch out of the ground for two reasons: 1. to save money and buttressing through allowing the Earth do the job, and 2. I wanted to be able to stand at the tallest part of my kiln and still see the person stoking on the other side.
Having completed the arch form and sighting every single strip, I was satisfied to move on to the next phase of the build--bricking the arch and then moved on to building the chimney.
The chimney was the last of brick-building for the kiln so I moved onto one of the last few steps of filling the back chamber with white flint rock gravel.
All done!!