Home Made Kiln Furniture - What have you used?

[andyslater]

Hi,

I need some kiln furniture for my newly acquired Prometheus Pro-1 kiln.  Just a shelf and some stilts to keep my work off the kiln floor and give me something I can remove when enamelling.  I'm seeing that this is going to cost something like 30 UKP and can't help thinking that most of the cost is because I only want a bit.  You know: like when you want 100g of something and it costs 5 UKP and you know darned well you could buy a 25kg sack for 20 UKP... but you simple don't need or want to store that much.

I saw a mention somewhere that somebody was using bits of an earthenware plant pot as stilts.  And I was talking to a guy at a car boot sale earlier today who does fusing and we reckoned that clay roof tiles would work so long as you applied kiln wash or paper.

I'm seeing vermiculite board for slightly more affordable prices.

I know that air drying "hobby" clays would be no good... and pottery clay has the "bulk buy issue" attached.  I'm wondering about plaster and cement too.

What have other people used?

Is there a reason I should be buy "proper" furniture?

[June]

Proper stuff because that is what I prefer and sometimes you get what you pay for 

[Flyingcheesetoastie]

You get what you pay for and properly made props and shelves last a lifetime if maintained well. I've got sets which are older than me!

You can source batts and props from places like Potclays but the only way you can get them cheaper is maybe to see if they have any odds and ends physically in their warehouse. I also got props recently from Castree kilns too.

[andyslater]

You can source batts and props from places like Potclays

I just had a look there... and indeed it looks like I can buy a batt that I could cut into 4, plus 4x 1" stands, for 13 UKP i.e. significantly less than the stuff I've been seeing elsewhere.  However their site wouldn't give me a postage figure so maybe I'll call them tomorrow and check suitability while I'm at it.

Still interested to know what home made options people have used though.

[Moira HFG]

Ebay! Or Gumtree, or Preloved...

[ajda]

Is there a reason I should be buy "proper" furniture?

Like you, I hate paying inflated or small quantity prices for stuff I can make or substitute or scrounge for myself. However, in the case of kiln furniture anything other than the proper stuff could be a false economy. When you are firing something of value, you don't want the shelf to warp or break, damaging the item or worse still the kiln itself. The refractory materials used for proper furniture can cope not only with high temperatures but with repeated heating and cooling - most ordinary clays can't cope with that, plaster definitely not, cement I don't know, but I wouldn't risk anything like that... When you consider the price of a kiln and the long service it should give if treated well, 30 quid or so for furniture doesn't seem excessive to me. The only way I'd consider economising in this case would be to see if I could get second-hand furniture or scrounge some broken/unwanted pieces from a potter.

[andyslater]

When you consider the price of a kiln and the long service it should give if treated well, 30 quid or so for furniture doesn't seem excessive to me.

Can't argue with that and indeed: my first ever kiln has been here for a week now and all I've done is heat it up and let it cool down again, to check it works.  Not putting anything in it until I have something to put it on; and not willing to take chances.

It does seem however that people here are talking about "potters stuff" which is a heck of a lot cheaper than the cordierite or vermiculate items I'm seeing suggested elsewhere.  I don't know what the pros and cons of that is?  As you probably realised: I'm new to this stuff, and while I'm finding a lot of reading on making stuff, I'm finding almost nothing in the way of recommendations for what to use in the kiln.  I'm new to glass work but I've been a model maker for 40 years so I know that there's an awful lot of stuff on the market for crafters that looks awesome to a newbie but which is just overkill and a waste of money.

[ajda]

I'm only assuming second-hand or broken/waste equipment from potters/ceramicists should be relatively easy to find simply because there are more of them out there than flameworkers and enamellers - also they generally work on a larger scale, so a broken bit of shelf of no use to them might be ideal for one of our small kilns. I guess they'd be less likely to give away useable kiln posts to sit the shelf on - but you can buy those from any pottery/kiln suppliers (1 inch or less height 50p-£1 each). Moreover, since most pottery will be fired to temperatures over 1000C, we know that anything suitable for that will be fine for glass and enamels with working temperatures rarely higher than 800C. I'd look up pottery studios nearby and just call to see what they might have - if nothing else you might get some good advice from people experienced in kiln work.

For enamelling, you might find that a piece of stainless steel mesh would do the job well enough - to raise the work off the floor, easy to move in and out of the kiln as you work. I use a piece for torching little bits of silver and have seen it used for torch-enamelling - eg this sort of thing in a reasonably heavy grade: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/251198345904/

In my baby muffle kiln (which I mainly use for garaging beads and off-mandrel boro work, and for annealing when I go travelling) I've lined the floor with a piece of ceramic fibre blanket - really only as a precaution in case I forget what I'm doing and melt glass onto the floor. It isn't computer controlled and I have a terrible short term memory, so if I set the manual controller too high and forget about it for a couple of hours this is what happens!

[Nicknack]

That's an interesting fused/slumped something-or-other!   Maybe a reminder-of-mistakes tea light holder?

Nick

[ajda]

I was thinking of offering it to the Tate - entitled "Entropy II" - stand aside Damien Hurst and co...

[Nicknack]

 

Nick

[andyslater]

I just placed an order with Potclays for an 8"x8"x0.5" batt.  That'll need cutting down because the biggest I could feasibly fit in my kiln would be 4"x5" and obviously I'll cut a half inch or so less than that so there's room to manoeuvre.  I figure I can get at least a couple of shelves out of that batt and use the left over bits as stands.  Alas I got hammered for postage (11 quid for a courier) but there's nowhere near here (that I know of) that I could get anything similar.  I'll let you know how I get on cutting it.  :-)

I also ordered some stainless steel mesh off eBay to form into "trays", and some kiln paper.

[ajda]

I'll let you know how I get on cutting it.  :-)

Yes. Please post an update some time. I'll be very interested to know how it goes... I have a feeling it won't be easy. What are you thinking of using? tile saw? angle grinder with stone cutting disc? Score and snap, probably not!

[andyslater]

What are you thinking of using? tile saw? angle grinder with stone cutting disc? Score and snap, probably not!

Dremel with cutting disk.  I use one recently to cut up clay plant pots as "furniture" for a vivarium.  I used up a couple of disks, and a couple of sheets of sandpaper afterwards to round the cut edges, but it worked.

[andyslater]

I just received a delivery from Potclays.  Actually they tried to deliver it yesterday but I was out.  An 8" square piece of 1/2" thick ceramic.  It looks like a bathroom tile without the glazing and "undulations" on the back to accommodate grout.  It's clearly been cut down from a larger piece as it has bevels on two edges and there's a ding in the smoother of the two surfaces that I might be a bit miffed about if I actually needed the whole area for slumping (but as I'm cutting it down I don't care).

They DID do a VERY good job of wrapping it: it looked like a bubble wrap foot ball.  So I guess the ding happened before packing... and wouldn't be an issue for anybody other than a fuser/slumper.  Do they call people that?  I wouldn't mind being a "fuser".  Sounds kinda cool.  Think I might be inclined to punch, as a gut reaction, anybody who called me a "slumper".  :-)