SPRING WOODFIRING ( Stoneware ).

Making the odd stoneware pot and all the underfired stuff from last time was just enough to fill the kiln with a very loose pack. In this firing were the new extruded bottles .

For the last millennium it had been rainy so was preparing for Easter Saturday to be wet, the sun came out and it was a beautiful day, butterflies and bees in the garden .

I had some gas in a bottle that needed using up, so that was used to dry out the kiln on Friday afternoon, a low heat just trickling in, I hate sending back gas to buy it back again.

I was up firing day at 5pm with the temperature at 160 c, lit the burner and stoked with timber until an ember bed built, I did the same in both boxes. I was joined at 10 by Tina who has a knack of firing woodkilns.

At first a lot of the smoke was coming out of the kiln body, later though the chimney started to pull and all the smoke came out on high, seems like it needs to be warmed up before it will pull

All went well until the temperature would not shift from 1130 c, even though the colour was changing in the kiln, Tina thought that as usual the pyrometer and thermocouple were faulty, I would have given up after a few hours at this temperature but for cone 8 going over in the right corner. So we continued stoking using some flotsam I had collected from our local beach, looking in the firebox it was flaming green and blue, some flotsam may have been floating around for 30 years before it’s washed up.

After 14 hours and cone 9 down in two spots we decided to ‘ call it’. We used up quite a bit of fuel, time to go skip surfing for pallets again. I emptied the kiln on Monday evening and was very pleased with the results. Especially the local beach clay slip that I used as a glaze. Time for a bit more experimentation .

Hanging out the washing to dry ! After the firing there’s always a lot of cleaning up to do