Wood fire! ! !

It's 5 am and I just returned home after a shift firing the wood kiln at school. It was fairly uneventful, unlike two years ago. That time, I was just finishing my shift. I went to throw one more log into the firebox, and as I let go of it, I heard a very definite "clunk". Not a sound I was hoping to hear. As I peered into the firebox, my heart sank as I realized I was looking at the ceiling slowly collapsing. We were at or around Cone 6 Which is well over 2000 degrees, but trying to get to Cone 10 (2350ish). With a bit of panic and a fair amount of pragmatic dynamism we formulated a plan to prop the ceiling with a piece of very heavy duty angle iron, while two of us used Raku tongs to remove all of the firebrick on top of the firebox. After removing the firebrick, we replaced the kiln shelf that acted as a ceiling for the firebox, and replaced the firebrick. This all took place in about 20 minutes. I remember at one point looking down at my shirt, through sweat dropping off of my brow, and wondering if my smoking shirt and pants might catch fire. When we finished, we checked the temperature and were heartbroken to realize that we had lost over 200 degrees in the ware chamber. The heavy duty angle iron we had used to prop the ceiling which had been straight as an arrow initially, was now shaped like a banana and bloody red hot! The temperature loss in the ware chamber was later exacerbated by the fact that in rebuilding the firebox ceiling and roof, we had lowered the temperature of that space significantly! The firebox at the beginning of the ordeal was probably over 2300 degrees and when we finished it was most likely 1500. . . Bummer, seriously. We ended up taking all of the work out of that kiln with crusty half fired glaze, flaking off, ash encrusted but unmelted and loading it into a gas fired kiln. The end result was not what we were hoping for but offered some decent surfaces. My work then was so bad. Talk about some ugly handles! It's funny to think that I've gotten so much more comfortable and confident in my throwing in such a short time. Two years from now, I'll be blogging about how silly my work is now. Such is life, right? BTW, I've got some work from the kiln here at the house. It is glazed in my celadon -ish glaze which is based on Leach's 1234 celadon. I talked about this a bit before and my tests turned out pretty good. I ended up using a base as described before with Neph Sy as the feldspar. The glaze doesn't have the timeless luscious soft stone look of chinese celadons, but it is a very classy crackly greenish transparent glaze that I'm positive I'll call juvenile in two years. I'm going to post the pieces on ETSY, which is a online art and craft sales venue. It's very cheap to post items for sale and they take a very small commission from sales. It will take me a couple of days, but they'll be there. If you would like to purchase some pottery that I've made, I'll donate all of the proceeds to a few different cancer fighting charities. I won't even keep the cost of clay.

.

Oh yeah, when I left the kiln, we were looking at Cone 11 down on top and cone 11 soft on bottom! In english, this means that the firing was a success as far as temperature goes. I was stoking twigs and small rounds in 6 inch diameter handfuls as fast as I could organize them into a stoke-able unit. I based my pace from watching fingers of flame escaping from just above the heat-swollen arch. I subsidized my handfuls with split lumber whenever necessary. When those fingers turned to jazz hands, I surrendered subsidy. My goal in adding the twigs and small rounds(1 - 2 inches) was to create a reduction atmosphere(lack of oxygen in a kiln affects the color of glazes as well as the color of the clay body) as well as get some sustaining heat. We stirred the coals every thirty minutes in order to release ash into the ware chamber. We checked rings every 3 hours and when I left we had a very delightful astroglide(think of the sexy swimsuit models in sports illustrated) sheen(rings are literally rings of clay which are pulled from the hot kiln to assess the quality of ash buildup - ash travels from the firebox to the ware chamber and covers the pots, then melts and forms a glaze). Cones(indicate temperature) were checked hourly so that we might figure out what our ramps looked like(ramp = rate of heat increase).

.

I messed up. I didn't actually load any of my own work into this kiln! I was joking about this tonight. This is the third firing I've worked without having any work in the kiln! Bummer. I'm totally entitled and invited to load work. I have, probably 30 pieces of bisque-ware sitting ready, but I dropped the ball on getting it loaded. . . What a douche I can be. C'est la vie right? Is that french? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 

.

I should let you know that the recording from last post turned out pretty good and while the purpose of said recording must be veiled in secrecy in case a very specific individual ever reads this blog(unlikely), I look forward to mixing the recordings on Tuesday. If you want to hear and know, what this is about, drop me a line at my email address and I'll send you an explanation and a copy of the song I recorded. I didn't write the song and it's a great song. I did not butcher it too badly. At least the drumming and bass playing is great! Brian and Rob helped out there.

.

Jesus, it's 5:35 and I'm exhausted! Did I mention that, now I've been awake for 23 hours? It's true. I'd better grab some beauty sleep so Tiffani can stand to look at me tomorrow.

.

Cheers

-oh yeah, check back for a link to my etsy page and help me defeat cancer for people everywhere!