Garbage Can Kiln

We made our garbage can kiln today, to do raku firings and then work with metal casting in my backyard.

It's a 20L galvanized can, lined with 1" of ceramic fibre, held in place with some nichrome wire and "paper" ceramic fibre acting as a gasket inside, so the thicker fibre doesn't tear. Normally you'd make ceramic buttons and thread the wire through those, but since we didn't have a kiln to make the buttons in the first place - a kind of chicken-and-egg scenario - we went with this design which seems to work fine.

We cut a 4.5" outlet at the top of the kiln and a 3" hole near the bottom for the 100,000 BTU weed-burner I found on craigslist.

And then sprayed the inside with rigidizer which helps protects the fibre a bit.

The whole thing took a leisurely and enjoyable 4 hours. We'll test drive it in a few weeks...