Low Rent Renaissance

Various mixes of Portland cement mortar over hardware cloth and poultry wire, stained with exterior wood stain and Rustoleum latex enamel.    

  My four pieces that were fired in my rocket kiln. I'm still painting my bisqued earthenware with acrylics.  I want to be able to fire my ceramic efforts here, at home, and have no space for an electric kiln. I liked the idea of a rocket kiln -- less fuel, more heat, less time. It was an interesting experiment but not a raving success. I made a few mistakes, learning as I went and sometimes, sadly, after the fact. The temp inside my barrel kiln reached 1480F at its peak -- short of my goal of a sustained 1900F. I'll be trying to correct my mistakes and going another round with my rocket kiln soon.  The heat riser was cast from vermiculite cement -- 4 parts vermiculite to one part cement. I got the idea from a video I watched about building rocket stoves. I later learned that concrete -- even vermiculite or pearlite concrete -- is not ideal for achieving the kind of temps that firing ceramics requires. However, I'm sticking with it for now, even in my rebuild. There is curr