No I did NOT Blow Up the Backyard....

So, I got the soda kiln firing right now.  Below are pix from loading.  You can see an empty shelf.. ya I really wanted to fill that but folks did not send pots to be fired.  I think this is too new for our community studio. And... well we are trying to get some of these fired in time for Christmas and so could not just let them sit...

Not a problem, it is just fine for an experiment. So a quick review:

 So you can see the holes for the burners.  Now basically a Flue has to be at least as large.  This set up offers a template, which I ignored... I made the flue twice as large.  Here is why. We can always cover more of it. This also sets us up if I do a hole on the side to add wood that we have the secondary air needed to fire the kiln.

Below you can see the kiln after loading, it is firing. But you can see how the flue is constructed.  Fire brick and then a damper on the top.

 

So shelves were all kiln washed.

A kiln pack set in wadding (ignore the 9mm in the background).  From Right to Left it is ^010, ^6 & ^7.  Ideallly I would have a ^5 but I didn't get any for this firing.  The ^010 is the marker so I know to put the kiln into body reduction (as opposed to glaze reduction later).
the other three (here I have two) are the Sacrifice Cone, Witness Cone and Guard Cone. The Sacrifice cone you are killing off and lets you know you are about at final temp. Also suggests the time to put the kiln in glaze reduction.

Witness Cone lets you know you are there, you soak and seal the cone and finally the Guard Cone lets you know if you are going over temp and need to do something about it.

This is the base shelf and the pots on there.  Yes this is a very loose pack. Loose is good for a Soda kiln but... ya.  I could fit a lot more if we had them...

This is the second shelf from the bottom. You can clearly see I staggered the half shelves. This is a good Soda Kiln practice to manipulate air flow. Would not be as important in a straight reduction fire.  You can also see the ton of ornaments.  If not for them we could also fit a lot more pots on this shelf as well.

This is the top shelf. And yes it is empty.  If not for the height of some of the pots I would have been able to skip this ring and shorten the kiln.

So clearly this kiln can fit quite a bit of pots even with the lost space due to converting from electric to gas.  Below you can see one of the burners. Look close and you can see the blue flame.

A better look at the burner system. This is a WARD conversion system if you were wondering.

I was originally told I could use one tank and fire the kiln. I have two (they are not full) so I can alternate as one tank freezes up.  This is a propane issue but by being able to turn off one tank and then turn off the other we can quickly switch tanks and dodge the freezing issue keeping the fuel moving smoothly.

Really hard to see in the picture, I was trying to catch the shadows from the exhaust on the kiln.

And again, not a great pic but if you look close you can see my eyebrows were every so slightly burned....