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Innovative Brick Traditional Fire-Pit


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Hi Everyone,

 

New here and relatively new to the world of Ceramics - This is one of my upcoming new years' resolution. Looking forward to hear some informative and interesting new insights here.

 

I am fascinated by the simple (traditional style) fire pits to fire earthenware pottery. So much so, I now have the urge to make one. To my awareness, there's only a probable 60% success rate in fire-pit set ups...and I would suspect the inconsistent temperatures are the reason for many failures.

 

This got me thinking....Is it possible to increase the success rate by constructing a double walled clay brick with cement grog mortar boxed kiln-like structure under ground (with a metal lid on top) to stabilize the temperature? ...or would the brick walls crack and/or implode due to expansions under the ground with the surrounding land pressure? would the damp ground soil (location relatively near a stream = rather moist soil) affect the temperature too much? (I live in the Tropics, so no freezing temps here.)

 

Advises and suggestions are fully appreciative.

 

Thanks.

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Welcome to the forums.

 

There have been quite a few topics about this lately. Apparently traditional firing is all the rage.

 

I've only done a couple pit firings. The first, I had near a total loss. The later firings. i had no loss. The difference, is that I bisqued my wares, with the later firings.

If you are set on doing the entire process with the pit fir alone, it is quite possible. But slow heating of the clay body is necessary. You can do it by setting the wares at the edge of the fire, or by preheating them in an oven.

 

Do a topic search, and you will find a great deal of information, because as I said, there have been a lot of topics about it, in the past few months.

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Great, Thanks for the feedback. I'll search around more about pit firing.

Placing the ware by the edge for preheating sounds like a plan....I'll try it when sparking up the coal base layer...give a good rotation before putting em into the box.

 

Standard clay bricks are readily available here for houses, walls, and temple constructions (Recently residing in Bali, Indonesia)...and there are quite a lot of restaurants with brick (pizza) ovens, so I would assume these (terra red) bricks have been baked accordingly ( to 1000 oC )...thus going to give a stab at making my own DIY brick firing pit

 

There are a few ceramic (stoneware and porcelain) centers as well...will definitely be worth checking them out.  There's also a whole village nearby where the local's main industry thrives on making souvenir earthenware pots n such...I'll prepare to blow my mind and journey into their realm.

 

Cheers.

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