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Read comments from artists, professionals and hobbyists

Have you used our kilns or furnace? We'd like your comments!  Please sign our guestbook an the bottom or our r2d2u home page.

David Tholfsen of San Francisco

Personal Firing Photos

Nancy Keeper

frank-computers are still a mystery to me just like the eclispe.  all i know
is we got the book yesterday just like you said and it looks really doable.
really! thanks so much for sharing that info. you have made it possible thru
your sharing for us to have a kiln--that is a luxury we didn't think was
affordable and i am sending a check to cover the cost of printing and
shipping ,that's fair and so worth it...thanks so much!
nancy

Carolyn Burke of Mustard Seed Pots, Charlotte, North Carolina

Personal Firing Photos

I wanted to thank Mr. Colson for allowing access to the Rocky Raku manual. I have just finished putting one together and it, of course you know, worked perfectly! I will soon be working with some ceramic art classes for children on a very small island in the Bahamas. Rocky will add fun and much interest to the program and is perfect for their situation. I am so delighted to expand their capability with your little Rocky Raku!

Kevin Nierman
Kids n'Clay

I thought you might like to know that I learned to make pots at your (Colson) studio many years ago studying with Carol Robinson. I have never stopped working with clay since that first eight week class. My work has been included in many publications and I will have a piece in the Scripps Annual (Claremont Ca.) this coming January. I hope you have seen my book "The Kids 'N Clay Ceramics Book" published last year. I have a private teaching studio here in Berkeley California.. where we have taught almost 200 children a week for the last 15 years. I wanted you to know that the class I took at your pottery school changed my life. Thank you.
 

Caron Banks-Wike  
Wishful Thinking Studio

Last fall, after the retreat/artist residency at Wildacres (on the Blue Ridge Parkway), we decided to build a raku kiln. Because building just about any kiln is very expensive, and because of space limitations, we searched for a small, low-cost alternative. What we got is also very portable, and very very fast. We highly praise our little "Rocky Raku" Kiln. It is very efficient, inexpensive, portable and its perfect for the potter who wants to experiment with Raku firing. It can also be used as a test kiln for Raku potters (to test glaze and clay formulations). We fired nearly 600 angel ornaments and pins, several taller pieces (up to 12" tall and 7" wide), and about a hundred smaller pieces produced by the students of the Wednesday evening pottery class. All of the firings used only one 40lb tank of propane.

Phyllis Pacin

The Art Collector

If I were to hire a kiln designer to make a kiln for my very specific raku firing needs, I would not be satisfied unless he or she came up with Rocky Raku. I have fired hundreds and hundreds of loads in my Rocky, which a friend built for me in 1982. Each load contains a tile holder I designed with a tongs-accessible loop so I can transfer all four tiles at once into the smoking chamber. (Moving the tiles one-at-a-time would be so slow that the luster glazes would cool and not do their thing.) The ten-minute firings enable me to produce a good number of tiles in a two-hour firing session. Rocky has been relined only once, about ten years ago, and is totally dependable. I can't imagine doing my work without it.

Robert Michael Smith, sculptor

I have used this book ( Kiln Building with Space Age Materials by Frank Colson ) to build several furnaces and kilns, large and small, over the past twenty years. Many of the designs utilize refractory fibers to build light weight, cost-effective furnaces. Perfect for small home foundries as well as professional foundries.