Gas firing

Gas firing I really like the effects of stoneware reduction firing especially for shino glazes so I thought that I would have a go at building a small gas-fired kiln for the garden to investigate whether it would be possible to achieve a firing on a small scale
I based the design on photos in Ian Gregory's book Alternative Kilns (A&C Black 2005) for the raku rocket on the basis that this should be reasonably gas tight and easy to insulate. The liner components, chamber, lid and flue, were thrown using a succession of large coils to build up the height and then separately thrown ports added.
	The lid and chamber were too large to fit in our electric kiln so they were fired by building a flat pack kiln arund them.
Once fired, the chamber and lid were insulated with ceramic fibre, aluminium sheet and weldmesh or chicken wire so that firing could commence
	Temperature monitoring was via cones and the pyrometer. The ports were sealed with ceramic fibre and reduction was controlled via the gas supply and a kiln shelf damper on the flue. The kiln had diificulty getting up much above 1150^oC
After firing the kiln was stopped up and left to cool overnight. This is a view through the flue vent in the lid. The reduction was not very strong but the two mugs with a shino glaze came out quite well with a range of greens, greys and silver indicating some carbon capture