When we started making pottery again after a break to attend college, start our careers, and start a family, we quickly knew that we would build another wood-fired kiln. Heavily involved with pottery in high school, we built a catenary arch kiln during our senior year. We not only love the results of the wood ash on the pots fired in the kiln, but we also love the process of firing a wood-fired kiln.

We have made many potter friends and acquaintances over the years which has been invaluable for the advice we have received from them when setting out to build another kiln. After much research and debate, the kiln we decided to build was a train kiln. The train kiln concept was originally conceived by John Neely at Utah State University. A train kiln gets it name from how the firebox and chimney are placed at either end of the chamber and resembles a train engine. The results of the pottery fired in a train kiln are similar to an anagama kiln, but most say the train kiln is much easier to fire.

Designing the kiln involved countless hours of reading, planning, and building the kiln in 3D using AutoCAD to help visualize the kiln and get accurate brick counts. We were able to recycle the bricks from our old catenary arch kiln and use them in two layers on the floor of the kiln. Those bricks had been recycled from Chaparral Steel (now Gerdau Ameristeel) in Midlothian, TX. They allowed the two of us high school kids to come out to their plant with a truck and flatbed trailer and dig those bricks out of their scrap yard. We were only a few hundred yards from big buckets pouring hot molten steel so it was quite a memorable experience. We were able to gather enough bricks to build the entire catenary arch kiln. It was a nice feeling to be able to go back and get those bricks from Casey's old house and be able to reuse them again on our train kiln almost 15 years later. Casey and his dad, Leonard, spent a full day there gathering the bricks which also required two trips between Waxahachie, TX and Crockett, TX to get all the bricks moved (plus one flat tire on the trailer while Leonard was driving on the bridge over Richland Chambers lake).

It was decided that we would build the kiln in Crockett, TX at Casey's dad's and stepmom's house. They live on about 17 acres out in the country near the Davey Crockett national forest. His dad has a large workshop there so he was able to extend the roof and pour more concrete on the backside to house the kiln. It is a perfect set-up. Casey's dad has been very instrumental in getting the kiln built and ready to go. Casey and I spent many weekends down there laying bricks, but his dad has done all of the welding, cutting the bricks, cutting and splitting the wood, making the firebox door, and building the overhead beam support for the castable lid...this is his idea of retirement!

We started planning the train kiln in Fall of 2007 and the kiln was completed in mid-May 2008. Our kiln is about 17 feet long, 4 feet wide, and 14 feet tall at the chimney. The chamber's volume is about 53 cubic feet. We used a combination of hard and soft fire bricks as well as Butler bricks (low duty fire bricks manufactured near Austin, TX) for the chimney.

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