We're Building an Angagma Part 2: The Design Stage
With the inflationary pressures of the 2023 economy Laura and I discussed with our financial advisor, the wisdom of converting some of our savings into physical capitol before the prices of concrete continued to increase. Prices were rising faster than our savings were earning interest, so we decided to act. We knew we’d need to sell a fair amount of pottery and possibly take a small business loan but the prospect of moving forward was exciting nonetheless.
I firmly believe that there is no such thing as coincidence.
A man named Sebastian moved to our city and reached out to me looking for a place to fire cone 10 work. I currently only have a cone 6 kiln but mentioned my plans to build a wood kiln one day and mentioned a need for brick. Fast forward almost a year and I got a call that he found some reclaimed insulating fire brick (IFB) for sale at $1.14 each. With the purchase of this group of 1,400 IFBs I was officially over my minimum for IFB and that was my last checkpoint before beginning the application process with the city in earnest.
The largest kiln firing in which I participated was the late Dan Finch’s Mama Anagama at 700 cubic feet and the smallest was a train kiln at Waubonsee community college that was about the size of a large dining room table. Justin Lambert’s kiln in south Florida serves as the foundation for my design though a tad larger and yet not quite as big as the kiln that Justin and Logan Wannamaker designed.
Goldilocks indeed but the particulars include the ability to walk into the mouth of the kiln standing up, facilitated by a removable grate, a vertical wall with a catenary arch on top that is straight until the third step where the walls and roof taper rather immediately, and finally the volume re-expands into a soda and then smoke reduction chamber that is integrated into a straight-walled-catenary-arch tunnel leading to the chimney.
Danny Meisinger, with whom I apprenticed for just under a year, spent many phone calls and in-person meetings discussing various attributes and their respective qualities which has culminated in the designs I have today.
After the kiln design was finalized, I began planning the slab and shed around the kiln, intentionally leaving enough space to work and move with ease when the kiln is at top temperature. This produced a 16’ by 30’ slab with a single south pitched roof rising from 12’ to 16’. I then, drew it up on graph paper and submitted it to the city including a narrative defending the use of the structure and explaining the smokeless nature of the kiln design.
And after one revision request to the concrete plan, it was approved! The construction timeline has officially begun!