[Clayart] Death by kiln?

[William Schran]

Almost death by kiln: Several years back the now retiring Bill
Campbell had a fire in his studio kiln area. Fire department hosed
down much of the room. Sitting in the room were Advancer kiln shelves
that got soaked. Bill thought he had dried them out but didn't follow
the firing procedure set by manufacturer. The first firing with those
shelves was a disaster. Shelves blew up and completely blew apart the
kiln. Bill told me an employee had just checked the kiln, walked
around the corner when the kiln blew apart! So that coulda been death
by kiln.
Just this week a potter friend in Australia, Bill Powell had an
explosion in a luster firing. He told me it was a normal luster firing
he does all the time but in a smaller kiln. It was a small lidded
container with a copper red glaze that exploded, shattering every
other pot in the kiln and causing substantial damage to the kiln. He
can only think the temperature ramp may have been too fast in this
smaller kiln.
Years ago, probably about 1972, in undergrad college we were firing a
hard brick kiln we had built that was straining to heat up. We tried
many things to try to get kiln to heat up better and one night
somebody had the idea to position burners right at the burner ports
and use bricks to seal off secondary air from entering those
ports.There were no safety cut offs on kiln. We would start kiln late
at night then return in morning to kiln usually at around bisque
temperature. One morning we arrived and looked inside the kiln and
there were flames coming up from floor of kiln! The floor was covered
in liquid propane!!! We quickly shut it down, opened spy holes,
damper, arch bricks in the door and let the liquid gas burn off.
Sealing off secondary air was certainly the wrong thing to do. Could
have been a kiln disaster!

William Schranwschran at twc.com703-505-1617

	-----------------------------------------From: "Roxanne Hunnicutt" 
To: clayart at lists.clayartworld.com
Cc: 
Sent: Thursday May 12 2022 7:35:56AM
Subject: [Clayart] Death by kiln?

 >
 > durable outdoor planters

 Oh Vince, I fear to ask, can you substantiate “life-threatening
injury”?
 I buy “destroy the kiln! “ But life threatening seems over blown,
no?

 Let’s go to there? And deaths by kiln you’ve heard of?

 “Here's another example of how stubborn that impacted water can be.
You
 have no doubt heard about people trying to re-fire a low-porosity
vitrified
 form after it has been in use. A good example would be a teapot that
 someone has been using every day, but then they decide that the glaze
would
 benefit from refiring. In the firing, such a form can explode from
the
 impacted moisture, and it can destroy the kiln or even cause
 life-threatening injury.”

 roxanne in Oregon where April and May have been like winter. Which is
great
 because WE WILL BURN IN SUMMER! And need any moisture at all!

 >
 >
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