Monday, May 25, 2009

The wood kiln that could.



A mid morning text that read "Not lookin good @all" could only mean shawn was pulling pieces out of the wood kiln already. Shawn is a bit of a pessimist (about wood fired results) but keeps it to himself, so this bit of sharing raised alarms of my own. We prepared for a half hour of getting our stuff from the kiln like the coolers and lights and to check the work for ourselves.  I saw the piece that shawn had pulled out and the glaze was not melted. Crap monkies! Flash-lighted the rest of the kiln and the story read the same throughout. A quick gut check and we through some wood in.
The previous few days had seemed too easy. The kiln never was let loose. I had written on facebook that it seemed undramatic. I had no pyro high. This firing we were planning on holding the temp back  a couple of cones to spare more wear and tear on the kiln. Cone 11 doesn't cut it for out tastes in color and texture.
From no color in the kiln to cone 13 ish (we only had 12's in and they were gone by the end) in under 6 hours we felt pretty good. we started a crash cool cycle to keep the schedule of unloading on wed.


This is how it should look at the end of the firing... oh sweet flame.

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