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.
Slip casting calculator
Plaster and water for the mould, a casting slip mixed or corrected to the right gravity, and how long each cast stays in the mould as the session goes on.
From the blog
All posts →How the slip casting calculator works
The arithmetic behind a plaster batch, a casting slip at the right gravity and the time a cast spends in the mould: volume-additive plaster, Brongniart's formula and the square-root casting law.
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.