Kiln builder
Design a kiln brick by brick. Four shapes, 3D model, honest brick counts with cutting optimization, and SVG export.
By Dennis Allende
The Form of Clay
Free pottery calculators and practical writing on materials, technique, and the physics behind the craft.
Tools
All tools →
Energy calculator
How much energy does your kiln need? Insulation, heat loss, R-values, and fuel equivalents for electric, gas, or wood.
Element calculator
Size the heating wire for a studio-built electric kiln. Wire diameter, coil geometry, surface load, and a feasibility check against Kanthal's limits.
From the blog
All posts →The studio looks clean, and the air is not
Burns heal. Silicosis does not. What respirable silica is, where it comes from in an ordinary studio, why cleaning wet beats a thorough weekly sweep, and how to find out whether the respirator you already own is sealing.
The controller reads 1222 °C, and the cone disagrees
Temperature is instantaneous, heat work is cumulative, and only one of them decides whether your glaze melted. What a pyrometric cone measures, how heating rate moves the target, and how to catch a thermocouple that has started to lie to you.
Digging your own clay, and writing the data sheet yourself
Where clay hides, the five field tests that take a jar of water and a bottle of vinegar, and the one firing that decides everything else. Prospecting is the testing discipline you already owe your materials, applied to one that arrives unlabelled.