My first backyard brick and pottery kilns

[ElectricEntertaiment]

Good video, no annoying music. Found your video while looking for different ideas on foundries and kilns. I think my first project will be a small foundry/forge. What part of the country do you live in? My last name is Hendrix, I live in Florida.

[rwhendrix]

@ElectricEntertaiment Thanks. I live close to Lafayette, Indiana, not far from Cutler. Hendrix you say? Thats interesting. I have new kiln footage I need to post on youtube soon. Much better kiln design now. Good luck on your forge. Keep in touch distant Hendrix reletive!

[supersovak]

awesome. just great to see you go through the whole process. wondering how the bricks came out in the end. Did you mix any sand into the clay?

[rwhendrix]

@supersovak Bricks from those firings was ok, but I have since done even better. I have a clamp kiln I fire a few times a year in Delphi at the Wabash and Erie Canal Park. I do mix a small amount of sand in with the clay, to help dry out after forming and make less cracks.

[Pupdawg9724]

i dont think its supposed to smoke like that

[rwhendrix]

@Pupdawg9724 Clamp kilns do smoke alot during firing. Its called reduction, and is hard to avoid right after adding fuel.

[rbmaserang]

looks like fun. but them regular paver bricks can't take the heatI have turned a bunch of them into dust. then i found some refractory bricks, real kiln/ incinerator bricks. another last bit of advice, youre fire is running too rich, pull a couple of bricks from around the hair blower to draw more air in. kudos. ps. try a leaf blower gas or elect, then repost vid. laterz

[rwhendrix]

@rbmaserang So true about pavers and red bricks, thats why I line with firebrick now. Temporary reduction is hard to avoid when adding fuel to the fire. It does ease up after a minute or so.

[smgarrettify]

did you use Cone ten clay?

[rwhendrix]

@smgarrettify I dug the clay straight out of the ground. I doubt it would hold to cone 10. I usually fire around cone 04 to cone 2. More of a low fire clay.

[smgarrettify]

cool! thanks

[digdugdiggy]

Im trying to do this too.

How did you make your bricks? Dig it out of the ground locally?

[rwhendrix]

Brick clay is from my backyard. Dug it out of the ground about a foot below the topsoil to get to the clay.

[digdugdiggy]

We had to dig about 5 feet in East Texas.

We get pretty good clay, mix it with water and a drill paint mixer.

Our problem right now is that it turns into a fluffy chocolate mousse that we cant really see turning into bricks. Any idea how to get the water/air out of it? Also, what do you use for a mold?

[rwhendrix]

Ok, put the muddy clay/water mix into 5 gallon buckets and let it settle out over several days, pouring off the water that comes to the top. Eventually put the clay out onto a large board and let it finish drying out. You can make a wooden box and hand mold the clay into it.

Another way that I use more often is to take dryer clay and just sieve out the rocks and sticks. Then I press the clay with my homemade cinva ram into bricks ready to fire. My website is at the end of my video.

[digdugdiggy]

What about the kiln? I can see your construction of one on the blog, but its very hard to follow in reverse chronological order.

The kiln is basically just a barbeque grill idea, boxed in with a flue at the top?

[rwhendrix]

If you google fastfire kilns and brick clamps you can get an idea of what Im doing. To start, Just build a firebox out of brick about 1.5 ft wide by 2 ft deep by 1.5 ft tall. 1 layer brick thick walls. Build a chamber ontop of that about the same size. have some flue holes for the gases to pas upward from the firebox. put into the kiln camber your "green" bricks. Top that with a loose layer of old brick to hold most the heat in. Can build an outside wall of brick around all that to hold in heat.

[rwhendrix]

Also is a BIG help to have forced air from a blower to feed into the firebox coals under the grating. Makes it get ALOT hotter that way. Chimney is optional at first. That will help with draft to get hotter temp.

[ziggybome]

would it get hotter nuth to melt alminyum

[enslaver]

That's cool, great to see some random pots in there