Fast-fire Kilns: anecdotes
SideStoke home | Fast-fire home

1. About metal chimneys. For anyone who is new to them, they need guys (wire or rope) to stop the wind from blowing them over ( the chimneys that is).. That's obvious. What might not be so obvious is that they grow during the firing. A six footer can grow 2-3 inches. So...the guy wires or ropes should be a little on the slack side or, what I do is introduce a few old bed springs to the wires, so they can accommodate both expansion and contraction. My learning curve has included:

A guy wire snapping (at midnight) and ladder to get on the roof to fix it "borrowed" by a neighbour, locked in his shed and him away on holidays.

Guy wires not snapping, so metal flue section crushing itself to accommodate the 3 inch expansion it wished to have and which I was denying it.

The stupid belief that I could squeeze one more firing out of a metal flue pipe that was obviously rusted to death. Wrong decision! When you buy one, actually buy two ( and don't lend it to your neighbour!!!!)

2. About the size of the wood for fast firing. In his Kiln Book, Olsen tells about a firing he did with Les Blakeborough somewhere a mile high in Colorado. Took 1 3/4 hrs to 1280C. Sounded a bit suss, so I checked with Les. "Almost true" said Les, "except the last 1/2 hour was a soak."  Then he told me the secret. They fired with dry roofing shakes split down to chopsticks by willing helpers. Non-stop stoking but still one firebox at a time.

At right: guy wires “ a little on the slack side”

Beware of relative expansion
To explain this paragraph below it might help to know that Cherbourg is located not far from Kingaroy in Queensland. It was established as a settlement for indigenous Australians in the early 1900s under a policy of segregation imposed by the State Governent of Queensland. In the period  1967-80 pottery was one of the supported activities.
I've an incident to relate which may be of importance to potential kiln builders who read your website. A friend is building a woodfired kiln at the moment and I was cautioning him about over-tightening the tie rods on his metal restraining frame for the arch. He had been considering welding the tie rods, so I related an incident from my Cherbourg days.
Owen Rye designed (but didn't build) the excellent 3 chamber 180 cu ft kiln at Cherbourg.(*) The tie rods across the kiln were 1 inch threaded rods through railway line metal uprights with washer and hex nuts obviously overtightened. A previous potter there had converted the kiln from wood to oil, fed from an elevated tank of several hundred gallons. Somehow, the tank leaked and one night the whole place went up in flames. The heat was so great that the kiln expanded, shearing off one of the hex bolts, which dropped only 6 inches in travelling 90 ft across the building before embedding itself in the front wooden door. That should be a good lesson for any kiln builder!

(*) Sadly, Owen left Cherbourg before the kiln was completed, and none of the several potters who followed in the next decade knew how to fire the kiln with wood. I think it was Ray Harrison who converted it to oil, but he left to set up the Yarrabah Pottery before the kiln was fired. The next potter didn't know how to fire with oil and then the fire happened. I converted it back to woodfire and we fired it successfully just before my term there expired. After I left, it was used as storage space and was later bulldozed to make way for another activity. Sad story for a great kiln!