OK, You'll have to excuse me if I go on and on about how wonderful my darling husband Daryl is.  He has just taken three weeks 'holiday' from work to build me the most wonderful covered Raku area and I'm so grateful. He built a high roof coming off the side of our barn and over my Raku kiln platform. There are partial wall to help protect me from the elements but still allow airflow and even built in benches with a large stainless steel sink. He's also put in lots of shelving and wire basket shelving for drying and airing pieces. I'm SO happy !!! Thank you Daryl :)

Our Raku kiln and set up. There are many ways to build Raku kilns and we did lots of research before deciding how we wanted to build ours.  We finally decided to build one that could be quickly lifted upwards by one person, using a pully system and wire rope.  And we also wanted a platform so were weren't firing on the ground.  We have ended up with a raised area built from railway sleepers with a heavy duty iron 'hang man's' system over the top, and it works extremely well.

The Raku Kiln

We built our kiln from a stainless steel dryer tub, which was the perfect size and was found under my studio.  We cut  holes for the burner and flue and then added handles.  The 'handles' are actually my childhood stirrups from my very first saddle and they couldn't be more perfect for the job.  We then lined the whole thing with thick kiln fibre and used 'buttons' that I had made from Raku clay and nichrome wire to hold it in place. The result is certainly not pretty but it is very efficient.

It took us a couple of firings and playing around with the flue and gas openings to find the quickest and most efficient way to get the kiln to top temperature. We found that by placing a piece of fibre to act as a chimney and by reducing the size of the top hole slightly, we were able to get faster results.

CLICK HERE to see some fantastic Raku effects

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