Hi guys and welcome back to my channel Blue Nose Trading. My name is Tori Solis, and today I am going to be repairing the bottom of my kiln floor. There's a lot of glaze that the previous owner let drip onto the bottom. I'm going to be removing that and then using a mixture of kaolin grog and kiln cement to repair the gaps, so let's get to it.
When we come and look in the kiln. (let the light adjust here). This is all glaze that has been dripped onto the floor of the kiln. I'm going to have to carve all of this out because this glaze, every time I fire the kiln, is going to re-melt, and it's going to continue to dig down deeper into the fire brick. It's really just a problem. It probably should have been dealt with several firings ago, but whoever had this kiln previously did not deal with this. So now, we are going to deal with it.
The first thing we are going to need to do is remove the glaze form the kiln floor. So hopefully my head doesn't get in the way. I've got, just a blade here. Chisels are what's reccomended, but I'm not going to use any of my husband's really nice woodworking chisels to get into my kiln brick. So we are just going to use this blade. This is a solid, so I am just going to try to get under each piece and pop them out. That's how we are going to try to get these out here. Just kind of work my way around them and pop them out. They are popping out of here pretty easily, in little chunks. I want to do as little damage to this kiln floor as I possibly can, and also get all of the glaze pieces out.
It was actually pretty easy to get the pieces of glaze up with this razorblade. I would recommend a razorblade. I just put the corner of the blade underneath the glaze drip and give it a little pressure and they popped right up. Speaking of them popping right up, it's a good idea to wear some protective eyewear because they can pop right up and hit you in the face. Which you know, your eyes are on your face, so there is a potential for you to get a giant chunk of kiln brick to smack you in the eye, which is not great. So, wear some protective eyewear when you're doing this. Be careful when you're using a blade. I'm wearing gloves just in general. Obviously, blade safety is a thing whenever you are working with a blade.
I wanted to just get in here and get all of the stuff up. I'm working around carefully, a bit methodically. I'm trying not to dig too deep, only as deep as is necessary. I don't want any of this glaze left in here. Any tiny little bit is just going to continue to melt every time I fire and continue to make problems. What I am trying to do here is eliminate problems by getting rid of all this glaze and then I'm going to fill in the gaps, vacuum it all up, apply some kiln wash, and then put a kiln shelf down there, so that I hopefully don't have to look at it again.
It's good to keep the floor of your kiln protected with a kiln shelf. I think that most people do just have a kiln shelf that just goes on the bottom. It's not a good idea to set ware directly on your kiln floor. I get a feeling that that's what they did because I really don't know how you get this much glaze on your kiln floor unless you were just setting pieces directly on your kiln floor like it was a shelf. I don't really know what happened, I wasn't there.
I'm double checking and making sure that I got every tiny little piece of glaze drip. There were a few pieces that dripped onto the side of the brick too. I'm just going through really carefully. They did have kiln wash on the bottom, so that might be part of why this was so easy.
I'm going to vacuum up all the bits. I'm wearing a respirator because this is NOT a HEPA filter vacuum. It's a good idea to use a HEPA filtered vacuum. If you're not going to use one, make sure that you wear a respirator. Also, my kiln is outside so it's not a big deal.
So that's all the damage, and these are the cool little pieces of glaze that I pulled out. The look like little geodes. I though about keeping some. But I ended up not keeping any because I was like, "this is just trash", and I threw them away. But, they were neat looking.
Next I'm going to use this dry kiln repair cement and this kaolin grog and some water, with my respirator mask on, to form a paste of cement to fix and fill the gaps in the bottom of the kiln. The directions said to do a 1:1 ratio of the dry kiln repair cement and the kaolin grog. The kaolin grog is not always necessary if you don't have big, deep holes. My holes actually aren't as deep as I thought they might be, so it might not even be totally necessary for me. But it does help with the expansion rate of the repair cement. The kaolin grog helps to make the expansion rate more equal to the kiln brick, because kaolin grog is just ground up kiln brick.
I mixed them in a 1:1 ratio. I added some water. The instructions say to add water until you "form a paste". Of course, I went too far, and added too much water. I had to get a little bit more of the dry kiln repair cement. At this point, all bets were off and I was just making it like it was pancake batter, and I gave up on measuring entirely. I was like "oh that's a little bit closer". Then I added a little more kaolin grog because why the heck not? Last time I added kiln repair cement, and we want to keep it kind of close to 50/50. After adding in that grog I was like "cool that looks just slightly runnier than toothpaste, that's probably it."
Next I'm going to apply this to the bottom of the kiln floor. I started it and I was like "I'll use a paintbrush!", and that, did not work. I gave up on the paintbrush pretty quickly, and just used my hands. What would be ideal, is one of those putty knives that you use to like, do drywall or fill in holes or gaps. I don't have one of those, and I didn't feel like going and getting one, so I just used my fingers. Using my fingers means that I am going to have a lot more sanding to do, and I don't really care. If you use a putty knife you're going to have a lot less sanding to do to get the bottom of the floor smooth. You do want to try to get it smooth because you want your kiln furniture to sit, without it having a mountain on one side or being uneven.
I just used my fingers and smooshed it and and wiped it off as smooth as I could get it with my fingers. You know we work in clay so we like to use our hands for things like this, even if we probably shouldn't. There's no health hazard to touching this stuff, just to be clear, none that I'm aware of anyway. It would be easier to use a putty knife, you would get it in there a lot more smooth, and have a lot more smooth of a surface when you are starting out.
Once I got it all in there, I let it dry for 3 days, and then I went in with a vacuum and I vacuumed up all the extra bits. While wearing a respirator, because this is not a HEPA filter vacuum. If you're doing this inside your home, that could be dangerous for anyone else that's inside your home without a HEPA filter vacuum.
I've got some 60 grit sandpaper and a piece of wood. And, you know, I'm making a makeshift sanding block here. I'm going in and smoothing it all out, nice and carefully. Creating lots of dust, so I am using my respirator mask. You need to take this outside. Honestly, this created a lot of dust just in general and it's not and indoor project. So if your kiln is in your studio, try to move it outside if that's possible for you to clean it up. Lots of vacuuming, sanding, dusting. My kiln is already in an outside situation, so it wasn't a huge deal for me. But it could potentially be hazardous if you don't have an air filtration system.
Next I'm going to apply kiln wash to the bottom of the floor. There was kiln wash on it before but I'm applying more kiln wash over the repairs and everything else. I probably put too much kiln wash on it. I did like three or four thin layers. I mixed my kiln wash to the consistency of about skim milk. I painted it on. I did let it dry between layers, but I cut out all the time where we just watch kiln wash drying from this video, because no one wants to sit around and watch kiln wash dry, but you get the jist.
Well that's it, the kiln floor's repaired. So if you like this video and found it helpful, go ahead and give it a thumbs up. If you'd like to see a weekly art video, you can subscribe to this channel, Blue Nose Trading. If you'd like to support my channel you can find me at patreon.com/bluenosetrading and I will see you guys next week!
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