Primaries

[Bill Kielb]

3 hours ago, CactusPots said:

Correct me if I'm in error, but my take away is that the primaries are largely irrelevant for reduction firing. 

The basic idea is to make your burner as efficient as possible on the primary side as in oxidizing. Do this to give the maximum potential power so when you run reduction with gas and damper, mostly damper, you will be able to maintain higher reduction levels and higher climb rates as may be desired. We do cone ten with 0.7 till the end and still climb 100 deg per hour. Eight to nine hours firing to cone ten is nice, a gas saver as well. If your kiln is well pressurized, then less deadspots. An efficient burner makes this easier to do. Tuning primary air to achieve reduction is really only a power burner thing, not really good on venturis.

[Mark C.]

(The basic idea is to make your burner as efficient as possible on the primary side as in oxidizing. Do this to give the maximum potential power so when you run reduction with gas and damper, mostly damper, you will be able to maintain higher reduction levels and higher climb rates as may be desired.)

yes that was my point  to get the burners working as clean as possiable-then use the damper for the reduction.Thats whay I never mess with the air flaps myself. Tune them and forgot about them.

Been working for many  many decades now. My car kiln has 8 burners.They are tuned to oxidize well.

[Bill Kielb]

1 hour ago, Mark C. said:

yes that was my point  to get the burners working as clean as possiable-then use the damper for the reduction.Thats whay I never mess with the air flaps myself. Tune them and forgot about them.

Been working for many  many decades now. My car kiln has 8 burners.They are tuned to oxidize well.

The interesting point Is there is probably no better time to fine tune the  primary air. It’s super easy to watch your O2 meter, go into heavy reduction and establish the best opening for the burner. They are hypersensitive at this point So this is easy to do. Any other time, no matter how much you turn things they pretty much seem fine which is why most folks just set them somewhere as best they can.  With the O2 probe available, now another tool that allows these to be tuned easily.

[CactusPots]

3 hours ago, Bill Kielb said:

The interesting point Is there is probably no better time to fine tune the  primary air. It’s super easy to watch your O2 meter, go into heavy reduction and establish the best opening for the burner. They are hypersensitive at this point So this is easy to do. Any other time, no matter how much you turn things they pretty much seem fine which is why most folks just set them somewhere as best they can.  With the O2 probe available, now another tool that allows these to be tuned easily.

That was what I was hoping for, but I couldn't find an adjustment of the primaries that made a difference on the meter at the point of heavy reduction.  Now it will be fall before I have another glaze fire, but I'll fool around with it some more when I get there.

[Bill Kielb]

56 minutes ago, CactusPots said:

That was what I was hoping for, but I couldn't find an adjustment of the primaries that made a difference on the meter at the point of heavy reduction

As I recall yours defies physics as if it’s does not have enough primary air from the get go.  If you do not have a similar strong  jet from the upper spyport that I posted above, then maybe that is causing an issue. Next time you light it up I would like to watch by Skype, teams, FaceTime.  Probably will have some insight.