How to build a wood fired ceramic kiln

Building a wood fired ceramic kiln of this type is easy. If you want to make a small-scale kiln to build and burn as a solo project or a two-man team, this is a good choice. This kiln is easily built with bricks stacked on top of each other with no use of mortar. It’s an updraft brick-kiln design, found in many versions around the internet. It’s built in a variety of ways from big to small, and also given a variety of names. I call it the half S-kiln, I guess it’s as wrong as anything else. It is a fun kiln to use, and easy to handle both at the low and high end of the temperature scale.

Bricks will move a bit (expand) as the kiln gets hot, and you will get bigger glitches between the bricks when the kiln reaches high temperatures since it’s just stacked. Remember to secure the kiln, I use steel wires. I found it to be strong enough to keep this small kiln together.

Also check out:

All the books about building pottery kilns/

The design needs some special-sized bricks, something you easily fix with a hard metal saw.

Hard metal saw to cut any kind of bricks for pottery kiln

In the first hour; burn slowly til you pass 150 degrees, this is called candling, and it is all about giving moisture time to vaporize from the clay before it reaches boiling-temperature. After that I burn as fast as I can; from 150 to 1000 degrees Celsius takes about 5 hours.

Securing the pottery kiln with steel wires

We built an opening in the back of the kiln to dig out embers blocking the air ventilation under the fire chamber. When not removing embers, keep it locked, you don’t want cool air from the back leaking in. I think this type of kiln has a bit too much fireplace going on, and I would like some more space for the ceramics. I will stack it up a bit differently next time, I share some photos if it works better.

Build a wood fired ceramic kiln the easy way:

It’s a lot of space for combustion in this long fire chamber. But it’s hard to see inside if the fire burns at the full length inside the chamber, undetected “cold zones” between the logs can start leaking cold air up in the wares chamber.

How to build a wood fired ceramic kiln with bricks and no mortar in half a day

Use an hour or two to pass the boiling temperature of water. Here I start up with some oversized fire-starters for an hour, keeping ting steady around 80 degrees. It’s a nice temperature for drying out the last moisture from the clay.

I use a 1-meter stick to stuff wood back in the fire chamber. Throwing short sticks deep into the kiln is also possible, better still was firing with thin sticks as long as the fire chamber itself, and feeding them one by one at their full length. Buildups of embers on the other hand are not a problem, embers fall down in the spacious air ventilation shaft, which you need to remove from time to time to keep the air flowing.

build a wood fired ceramic kiln and fire it, candeling and preheating

The hotter it gets, the harder it is to increase the temperature. This means the last two hundred degrees can be tuff. Stalling means the kiln won’t get hotter no matter what you try. To overcome stalling and reach your desired temperature; understanding the practical aspects of woodfires and combustion is key. Finding a good fire rate for your kiln is important.

Read in-depth about wood firing and how to reach high temperatures here:

How to burn ceramic consistently in a wood-fired kiln/

Yes, I reached my 1000 degrees Celsius, it’s enough for this time: