R. Thomas & Sons Company reducing burning costs with portable burner

Reducing Burning Costs

A portable burner for whiteware and electric porcelain kilns is the most recent innovation in the domestic pottery field, and first tests have proved very satisfactory. In seasons past, T. J. Underwood of Dayton, Ohio, has worked out a time and labor saving burner for pottery kilns, but all previous installations were stationary.

The R. Thomas Sons Co., of Lisbon, Ohio, manufacturers of high tension electric vitreous porcelain ware, have equipped two kilns with this late designed burner, and now the management has announced that all kilns are to be similarily equipped. The system is the application of steam forced into the coal flame, thereby creating a greater heat efficiency and the burning of kilns in quicker time.

Notations kept while the first two kilns were being burned under this system of firing, showed a saving of twenty-five per cent, in time, and a reduction of fifteen per cent, in the amount of coal consumed. It was also recorded that no "clinkers" stuck to the fire box, whereas in the past under the old method of coal firing, crow bars had to be used to knock "clinkers" from the sides of the wall in the fire box.

As for the results under this system of firing, the firm announced this week that a better quality of ware was obtained, and the loss of cracked or imperfect ware was reduced to a minimum.

This new equipment is now interchangeable, and while some parts are stationary, yet other attachments can be removed from kiln to kiln as required.