I have been working on my portable wood fired kiln designs and tweaked it a little bit more. I am up to design variation No.9 now, and working on number 10.  I have designed a way to have these kilns fired by both wood or LP gas, but not at the same time! It’s a simple method of changing the setting so that it can work with either fuel, with just some minor adjustments.

My first kiln building job of this year is to make a number of these little kilns for customers who ordered them at the end of last year. So I’m starting the year running at full speed. For some unknown reason, my year has become booked out right at the start. 11 kilns booked in and deposits paid. My next available slot is in December!. This will be for delivery in Feb 2018! I can’t believe that I could be so booked out, almost a year in advance. It’s crazy.

I heard a lovely little story about a tiny company that makes hand made cars, called ‘Morgan’. They make a small number of individually hand made cars each year. A frustrated customer, when told that he would have to wait a year for delivery,  exclaimed “you don’t sell cars. You ration them!” It seems to be getting a bit that way with hand made kilns.

My small factory space is completely full of these little gems. I must say that I’m really happy with the way that they are turning out. We have been using one of these little kilns ourselves all last year and it works a treat, firing to stoneware in reduction in just 3 1/2 hrs. and using just a wheel barrow full of wood to do it.

I have so much work to get through that I get my very good friend and righthand man, Warren, to come down and give me a hand for a few days. Warren is an amazing person. He can do almost anything, and he does it really well. So many fantastic skills. We laugh a lot and get so much work done. It’s alway great to have Warren helping me.