Portable Kiln

Okay, not really.
More like a kiln that needed to be ported.
My Friend Kyle's(MFK) kiln, not a small kiln mind you, was in need of a temporary resting place.
It's current resting place is soon to be renovated so my job this morning was to help move that cube of bricks:



That's an Olsen kiln with 24 cubic feet of stacking space. MFK picked that up some years ago from another person who had decided to get out of ceramics.
We transported that thing from there to here, now it had to go from here to somewhere else.
Best guess is that it weighs somewhere north of a ton.
Not like we can just pick it up and move it.
So we had to get a trailer:



Then we used a couple of automotive floor jacks to pick it up and load it on the trailer bed.
Wait!
Uh, I think it's best to unload that thing before we start!



We lifted it up, then used a come along thingy to pull it onto the trailer.
Not as hard as I thought it was going to be:



Here's a good look at the manifold and the burners:



There are ten burners on the manifold, eight venturi type on the perimeter, and two regala kine in the middle.
The manifold sits under the kiln, where the burners are aligned to pukas in the floor of the kiln.
Burning propane gas, this kiln fires to temperature(cone 10, around 2180F) in around eight to ten hours. The venturi burners create a little more BTUs than the other straight burners, so MFK was able to cut down on some gas usage.
This is were it all happens!
Inside the kiln I mean.
Okay, you still gotta make the pots, but really, the kiln can make or break your work.
There's just so many things going on in there as you are reaching temperature, you never know exactly what's coming out.
Remember what I said about Christmas?
High fire stoneware and porcelain is where it's happening.
All the stuff I've been fooling around with, it's well, just fooling around.
I have access to this kiln, so maybe I'll take advantage of it in it's next incarnation.
Where ever that may be.