Saturday, October 3, 2009

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

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

sorry to hear about the front shelf toppling over... hope the glazed pots come out well.

Ron said...

Sorry to hear about the topple. Sounds like a good recovery though and hopefully you'll get those fired and out before the Art Tour.

I learned a new Japanese word this week. Gambatte. It means to never give up or to Try your best. The Japanese believe that the effort is more important than the result.

Joe and Christy said...

Ron,
gambatte is one of the few Japanese words I know. My friends Takuro and Hitomi taught it to me, and we always used it during firings. I heard it a lot side stoking "gambatte Joe". Good memories.
Joe

ang design said...

cool picture, very contemplative, hope the refire goes ok.

Tim Ayers said...

any idea why the shelves toppled? hope the rest of the kiln meets you expectations.

Ron said...

That's cool Joe. I've not used it out loud yet, I guess I'll have to find the right place and time. Cheers, Ron

Anonymous said...

My favorite is the bowl with leaves also, it's lovely. Hope your refire goes well guys and that all your hard work pays off!!

Liam S said...

Very thoughttful blog