Dear Minkoo and all,
My experience of traditional pottery kilns in Punjab and Sindh
(Pakistan) is that wood and not charcoal is used. Also, wood is often
mixed with chaff or any other crop leftover (e.g. today are very
important the dried cotton plants removed from the fields). There is
no need, as Dana says, to achieve high temperatures and what is more
important is to control the firing temperature. For traditional
potters in Pakistan, the use of charcoal would be too expensive.
Cheers,
Marco
___________________________________________________
Marco Madella, PhD (Cantab)
ICREA Research Professor in Environmental Archaeology
Director, Laboratory for Palaeoecology and Plant Palaeoeconomy
Department of Archaeology and Anthropology
Institució Milà i Fontanals
Spanish National Research Council (CSIC)
C/Egipcíaques, 15
08001 Barcelona (Spain)
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
Tel: +34 - 934 423 489 (switchboard)
Fax: +34 - 934 430 071
skype: mmadella
http://www.phytolith.net (personal page)
http://www.icrea.cat
http://www.imf.csic.es
On 21 Apr 2009, at 11:04, [log in to unmask] wrote:
> Dear Minkoo,
>
> In agreement with previous comments, I suspect that charcoal fuel is
> harder than wood fuel when burnt at high temperatures - presumably
> because the moisture has already been removed by the conversion
> process
> (although this is based upon my own observations rather than
> scientific
> evidence!).
>
> In general, however, I do not think that the process of firing
> ceramics (if this is what you have) necessarily requires the use of
> charcoal rather than wood as a fuel. Iron smelting/smithing, for
> instance, do need charcoal fuel to achieve the high temperatures
> necessary, and also to minimise the smoke while working the metal.
> Given the high labour/value costs of converting wood to charcoal, it
> wouldn't necessarily be cost effective to use charcoal for pottery
> kilns. You didn't say where your material is from, but In Britain, at
> least, wood seems to have been mainly used until the large scale
> operations of the Industrial Age when coal became the main fuel for
> kiln firing.
>
> Best wishes
> Dana
>
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> ----------------------------------------------
> Dana Challinor MA (Oxon), MSc
> Freelance Charcoal Specialist
>
>
>
>
>
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> ________________________________________________________
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