All done firing... for this week

Despite all odds, we got the pots glazed and the kiln loaded and fired. We started firing Thursday night and just finished a few hours ago, thanks in a large part to help from good friends Sheridan Ray, Krista Loomans, and Eric Switzky. Sheridan has been staying with us all week and has been a huge help, and Krista and Eric both came out and put in long days of loading and firing. Eli was here for a good portion of the week, as well, filming the loading and firing. Chris Early arrived this afternoon, giving us a good morale boost as the firing was finishing.

Unfortunately we did have a bit of a disaster this morning. The front stack of shelves in the first chamber toppled over into the fire box. This was a first for us. Luckily we were able to get into the firebox and do some rearranging of broken pots and shelves with a piece of rebar, so we could finish firing the back of the first chamber. The second and third chambers fired smoothly. We'll unload Monday and post pictures then. Although it's disappointing to lose all of our unglazed pots, I am excited to see how all the glazed ware came out.

The Fall Art Tour is two weeks away, so our revised plan is to spend this week getting things together and fire the first chamber again this coming weekend. We don't want to enter the Fall Art Tour without any unglazed pots. So hopefully the second go around of unglazed pots will be more successful than the first. Our week certainly looks much more busy than we had planned, but hopefully everything will turn out for the best. Sorry but we don't have much of a "stokers gallery" this firing. I did really like this picture though of Krista and Christy waiting for the flame to pull back past the dampers to stoke the third chamber.
We'll post pics after the unloading Monday.
Joe