Avoiding Kiln Dust

[wfsupply]

What are some good tricks to avoiding kiln dust? I shop vac it out (blow and suck!), wipe pieces as they come out with kevlar gloves, keep my glass as clean as possible, but there's just always kiln dust there.

Are there any good tricks to not letting your work get dusty?

Thanks

[ReLo442]

use a kiln liner, a kiln shelf on the floor of ur kiln. do your damndest to not rub any bricks together, or rub anything against the bricks.

Besides that....get used to it and just try to not blow the dust all over the place.

[Butcher45]

I thought there is a product designed for kilns that you can spray the inside of your kiln with that cuts-down on the dust. Anyone familiar?

[Icarus]

Have you tried waiting until your kiln is cool, lightly misting the bricks with water and then wiping them down with an old (but clean) terry cloth towel?

I have not (at least not with a kiln), but it's the way I get dust off of about damn near everything else.

Otherwise, I just rinse everything after it comes out of the annealing cycle. Fill up a big big bowl with pieces, flood with water, pull them and shake them off one by one. Clean and sparkley every time.

[ReLo442]

I had to do the bowl method this last week. Went to a festival on a river beach and sand was all over everything. had to individually clean each piece of glass which sucked cuz i brought my jewelry cases too

[RamblezMarblez]

If I could go back in time I would have never used the kiln wash...just the kiln paper for melting bottles...like the one guy said...don't slide/rub your glass on the kiln floor....I saw a graphite liner once when I asked a similar question.

[l33t:weasel]

i shop vac my kiln like twice a year maybe when the layer of dust gets bad, usually i would rather the dust stay in the kiln than get blown into the air. edit(also the friction of the shop vac can wear the brick additionally)

if im real serious about keeping dust of something i will make a quick little structure out of some 4-6 mill to lay flat on the bottom infront of the door im working out of.
nothing fancy just like an L or H shape so it doesn't roll around, and a couple extra dots so the glass i set on it wont roll around.

seems to do the trick.

[somewhere]

Colloidal silica or colloidal alumina is what we use to rigidize fiber. This also works on brick if you add some zircon to the mix you will have a surface you can wipe down dust free. There are also products you can buy for thus application wesbond makes a good one. Let me go find a link.
Here ya go:
http://wesbond.com/wesrock.htm
You can order colloidal silica or alumina from Dudly Giberson over at Joppa glassworks. You can look that one up yourself.

[Cody_S]

Graphite Kiln Liners work pretty good too.
I know people that love those to bits...