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Summary
The recap of last year’s Permaculture Technology
Jamboree continues with about a third of his instructors (
Alan Booker, Chris McClellan aka Uncle Mud, Opalyn
Rose, Samantha Lewis, and Beau Davidson).
After a bit on dowsing with Alan, Paul moves on to Uncle Mud and his big win in the world of ceramics. An old traditional way was to build a large fire out in the open around the ceramics and keeping it going for some time, using a lot of
wood rather inefficiently in the process. This process was improved by building a brick structure or kiln around the fire to keep the heat in, then arguably improved again by using natural gas or electricity for a heat source, though some claim this results in a less appealing finish. So what Uncle Mud did was to hook up a J-tube to an old kiln that was donated to see if it would work, much to the chagrin of one of the other instructors, and lo and behold it works. On a small fraction of the wood of a traditional kiln, far cheaper to build and run than any electric or gas kilns, and no masses of black smoke to
boot. Thanks to the reduced fuel consumption and hotter burn temp, the firing time has come down from around 3 days on a traditional kiln to roughly 5 hours, which also means that you no longer need a team working in shifts to keep the kiln at the right temperature.They’ve tried before with a stratification chamber that got to a higher temperature, but the heat was uneven and it caused the pottery to break mid-firing. With more refinements, it may well end up being superior, but they haven’t gotten to them yet.
Relevant Threads
8-Inch Portable Modular Rocket Engine with Forge, Crucible, and Kiln Attachments
Rocket stoves forum
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This podcast was made possible thanks to:
Dr. Hugh Gill Kultur
Kyle Neath
Bill Crim
anonymous
Chris Sugg
Kerry JustTooLazy
Jocelyn Campbell
Bill Erickson
Sasquatch
G Cooper
Dominic Crolius
Penny McLoughlin
Mehron Kugler
Pasquale DeAngelis
havokeachday
Julia Winter, world's slowest mosaic artist
Greg Martin
Mark
Sean Benedict
Rita Bliden
Dana Martin
Candace Dahlk
Keith Kuhnsman
Leanne
Eric Tolbert
Nick DePuy
Nathan Hale
Opalyn Brenger
Polly Jayne Smyth
Todd Gerardot
Katie Young
Ivar Vasara
Brent Lawson
Weston prestage
Candice Crawford
Chris Holtslag
Song Zheng
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