The Train Gang
Panel at the 20+1 years of Tozan Kilns Woodfire Conference, NAU, Flagstaff, Arizona – October 2006.
By Robert Sanderson
(download the msword file)

My contribution to the ‘Train Gang’ panel on the train design of kiln was a brief account of my own involvement with this type of kiln.

My introduction to the Bourry firebox was while I was still a ceramics student. During the summer of 1974 I had the opportunity to work with Ray Finch at Winchcombe Pottery in Gloucestershire, England. The energy/oil crisis of the time had made many potters in the UK consider alternative fuels for firing and at the time waste wood, ‘was there for the asking’. Ray’s newly built 90cu.ft.(2.54m3) kiln incorporated four Bourry-fireboxes, two at each side of the kiln.

Returning to college I completed my studies and in 1976 began working with a woodfire potter in Comrie, Perthshire, Scotland and stayed for four and a half years. Here too the stoneware kiln was fired with a Bourry type down-draught firebox. It was here that I began to understand the principle of the firebox design.

Later, travelling in Australia and New Zealand, my now wife Coll Minogue and I experienced Bourry-box kilns, and on our return to Scotland to establish our first studio together in 1984, we naturally chose the Bourry-firebox design. Our design of kiln was more influenced by what we had seen on our travels, and was based very much on the research Ivan McMeekin had carried out in Australia between the 1950s and the 1970s, rather than the initial research conducted by Michael Cardew while in the Gold Coast Colony (now Ghana), in west Africa in the 1940s and also eventually at his Wenford Bridge Pottery in Cornwall, England.

I attended the 1991 woodfire conference held at the University of Iowa at which John Neely (USA) handed out plans of a large Train kiln design he had recently designed and built at Utah State University. This was my first introduction to the concept of the Train kiln.

In 1997 I was awarded a Winston Churchill Travelling Fellowship to compare woodfiring practices in Australia and Japan, whilst Coll and I were carrying out research on woodfiring for our book Wood-fired Ceramics Contemporary Practices .

Whilst in Australia we visited several potters who had small experimental kilns based loosely on the Train design John Neely had built at the Fire-up Gulgong woodfire conference held at Janet Mansfield’s farm workshop complex in 1993. The Australians had taken the concept of the design and adapted it to suit their own requirements. What was interesting was the size of these kilns, 10-15 cu.ft (0.5m3) of stacking space. They were ideal for experimentation with unglazed ware and in one case the study of historical Asian glazes – and small enough for one or two people to fire in 18-30 hours to stoneware temperatures.

Back home in Scotland Coll and I were invited to build and fire a version of our large kiln for the 1999 International Ceramics Festival in Aberystwyth Wales, UK. We quickly decided that a small version of the Train kiln would be far more appropriate for the event, given the time restrictions. So we set to and build and fired  a test kiln at our studio prior to the festival (which was we think, the first Train kiln to be built in the UK). This kiln design incorporated our version of the Bourry-firebox as we had used on our large kiln, with the chamber being simply two parallel walls connecting the firebox to the chimney. On the strength and success of this event we were invited to build our version of the Train at the International Ceramics Centre, Skælskør in Denmark – a kiln which has been fired on a regular basis since then by visiting artist/sculptors/potters. During the summer of this year (2006) I was invited back to Skælskør to make repairs the kiln.

In 2003 Coll and I were invited to build and fire a Train kiln at Red Deer College in Red Deer Alberta, Canada. For this version we incorporated a funnelling of the chamber walls towards the chimney, as previously built by Sandy Lockwood (Aust) in 2003, also at the International Ceramics Festival Aberystwyth Wales UK.

It is interesting to note how the concept of the Train kiln has developed in different ways in various countries. The ones that Coll and I have built have been small, easy to build, easy to pack and easy to fire versions. We are also aware of several of these ‘simple’ train type kilns in Canada. We have been amazed at the scale of the Train kilns we have seen in the USA – most recently the huge Train kilns at Northern Arizona University.
 I think it fair to say that John Neely’s recent and innovative use of the McMeekin-Bourry firebox has ensured that a new generation of international woodfirers, this time in the 21st century has the opportunity to build on and understand the legacy which Bourry, Cardew and McMeekin have given to us.

Robert Sanderson is co-editor and publisher of the international woodfire magazine The Log Book .

Notes:
For a historical perspective of the Bourry-firebox please see my article published in Studio Potter Vol. 28 No. 2. 2000.
Wood-fired Ceramics Contemporary Practices  published in 2000 by A&C Black, UK; University of Pennsylvania Press, USA, and Craftsman House, Australia.