Wednesday, July 8, 2009

loaded and getting hot

I've been trying to get more creative on my post titles.... pretty good huh?
I would have posted sooner, but I misplaced the camera for a little while there. Sheridan found it this morning though, and everything is going well. The first chamber is full.

The second chamber?....


A little less than full. We figured that since the second chamber is already getting to ~1800 either way we might as well put the rest of the pots in there and take advantage of the free heat. With such an empty chamber we were extra careful to try and stack the chamber evenly top to bottom, and side to side. We left 9" open on the floor, with the thought that this way there is a better chance that we can fire the chamber slightly dampered down and it will be easier to achieve a decent reduction
As for gap in the front of the first chamber, we stuffed some fiber in to act as an expansion joint.


We then covered that with newspaper soaked in a clay/sand slip to bridge the gap, and then covered that in our regular sand/clay/straw mixture, just to make it look pretty.
300 degrees and rising! The new kiln door fits quite tightly too... nice.
Joe

7 comments:

Zachary and Jennifer said...

Exciting! I can't wait to see the results.

Do you break many pots during the loading process? I am such a klutz, I would probably knock over the whole stack.

Jennifer

Joe and Christy said...

Jennifer,
We managed not to break any pots this time! I think we broke around 6-7 pots the last firing, mainly due to rough handling. Luckly I've never knocked a whole stack over, thank goodness that would be pretty awful.
Joe

brandon phillips said...

are those wet pots in the first photo? that's what i call down to the wire!

Michael Mahan said...

Good luck with the firing. I'm still figuring out what to build.

Michael

Joe and Christy said...

Brandon,
we always seem to be finishing pots as we load them, then running them out into the sun to dry. As long as they are not flexible we load them. I guess that might explain why I was so worried when you said you fired in such a quick time (6hours?). Quite a different approach. We start off pretty slow.
Joe

STARworksCeramics/Takuro said...

Good Luck for the firing!

Anonymous said...

very exciting stuff... looking forward to results too, love the shot of the door hanging