Talks and Workshops

In the early 1970s, Lowell Baker designed a system for utilizing sawdust as a fuel for firing pottery. It included a large barrel or drum full of sawdust connected by PVC tubing to an ordinary household vacuum cleaner. The vacuum cleaner sucked the sawdust from the barrel via the PVC tubing and blew the sawdust into the kiln firebox. When the sawdust entered the hot atmosphere of the firebox, initially started with wood, it would sustain the fire through to the final stages. This method of utilizing a waste product as fuel began being used in Nicaragua and has spread to other places. Using agricultural waste has reduced the potters' dependence on wood by 50 percent. The system has been used to fire kilns with coffee and/or rice husks in areas where these agricultural waste products are most accessible. The most efficient fuel is the granular sawdust resulting from log milling operations.