Home made kiln for HT--can it be done? Crazy question....

R

Railrider1920

Joined
Dec 14, 2010
Messages
403
Hey Folks,
I was looking at some threads that had pictures of kilns. They look kind of "simple". Bricks encased in sheet metal of some kind to form a cavity with a lid or door. Then there is the heating coils that are placed into groves cut into the brick. Then there is the electrical side of the kiln, temp control, power etc. Can they be made at home and be decent to good?

Now here is the crazy part. I pulled an electrical furnace out of the trash and stripped it down for scrap. I kept the heating coils from it. There are two sets of coils. Each one uses (or needs) 4.75 KW of 220 power to be used as a furnace. If I was to take them out and put them into a brick made cavity and then get the temp control unit and get it hooked up properly, think it would work? The coil pack has a shut off control set to about 100 deg or so. If that is taken off, wouldn't it just keep getting hotter and hotter until shut off or over loaded or something? Would a PID unit work for temp control? I'm pretty much electrically challenged, so I would definitely get some help if I ever decided to try this. Just thinking out loud I guess.

Think it would work?

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Many people do build them. What you are shooting for is a very stable temperature that can be held over time. Time at temperature is what is needed. The controllers can be purchased separately.
The controller is just about a must have. The ovens are very useful but without a controller they are a pain to operate. You want to be able to set the controller and come back the next day and remove the annealed or normalized or what have you out of the oven.

Good luck, Fred
 
Here's mine that I built and used for several years before upgrading to an Evenheat. It's based on the British Blades oven.

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--nathan
 
Thanks guys.
12345678910, thanks for the links. The crazy part I was talking about is using the coils from the furnace. Whenever I find interesting stuff, I always think about what I can do with it or make out if it other than the original intended purpose.
Nathan, when you were using it, was it very hot on the outside of it? Obviously you have to get close to it to open it, but can you stand next to it for a few minutes? Could you have sit at your bench next to it while it was hot?

I saw the furnace coils and thought about a kiln. I know a place where I can get fire brick for $1 or less. They are not the soft ones though. The instructions suggest not to use the hard ones. I can't find the soft brick any where between me and new orleans.
Thanks again
 
There are places you can order soft bricks by the box. The hard bricks I don't think will work very well as you need the heat reflected back into the chamber, whereas the hard bricks tend to soak up more of the heat. I'll see if I can find a source for the soft bricks.

The outside of most kilns will get very warm. My Evenheat gets hot enough to burn you if you touch it more than very briefly, and my homemade oven is pretty much the same, especially at the upper temp ranges for stainless steels with very long soak times. However, that's just from touching the unit. Even a couple of inches away from the surface, the heat is hardly detectable. So there is no trouble sitting next to the oven if your not touching it. Do make sure you have a good buffer of air between the oven and any combustable surfaces just for safety.

--Nathan
 
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