Fall Firings

Fall firings have begun! Last week, kusakabe-sensei fired for a total of 23 hours. He candled with propane, starting at 8 pm. We are unsure whether they started wood at 1am or 4am - we will confirm later today.

Most of the work will be shown at Keiko Gallery this month. Results were great, although damage was high as sensei fired many green pots and had many cracks.

We will post more about this second firing, which Nora started this morning at 4:30am.

Images, as promised...

Great photos from Briana, one of our senior potters:

Our three senior woodfire adventurers...

Nora - the intrepid leader...

Maybe we'll get some images of the work that comes out next...

Fall Firings

This fall, we had a number of firings. Nobles fired twice, introducing a dedicated group of high school students to woodfiring. Nora led a group of 3 seniors and 2 middle schoolers through a wonderful semester of working and firing. Photos will be posted soon.

In early November, Wayne Feurst led a workshop out of the Harvard Ceramics Program and fired GreenFire for about 12 hours. Hopefully, Wayne will get us some photos as well!

First Firing of the 2010

Nora started the firing around 6am. We decided to keep the temp low for a bit, especially compared to how the Adventure Firing went in the fall (at cone 8 in 4 hours!). We were worried about the residual moisture from the winter plus we had an enormous amount of rain in the previous 4 days (where yesterday we candled with propane for about six hours and we had good sunshine).

8:30 we were at 400 and transferred the fire from ashpit to fire box. This kept temp holding for an hour as it adjusted.

11:00 1000

12:00 1500

1:45 2000

3:30 2300

4:30 sidestoking

5:15 Cone 11 soft

7:00 stopped feeding wood - monitored cooling

8:00 mudded it up

We are opening it up today and will post some pictures of the results. We will probably try and reload today so that I can fire again next week - Nora will be in South Carolina on a crew trip but we have so much work we can do it again. I want to get another one done before heading to NCECA and another wood firing with Bruce Dehnert...

Loading Complete

The kiln is loaded and we are just waiting for good weather to fire. Some of the prep work we did this week: unpacked the curtains, swept out the chambers, chiseled some of the floor (it had some wadding and leftover soda ash from the last firing) and kiln washed the entire ware chamber.

I wrote about some of the pieces on the Sabbaticalist. We will probably fire on Tuesday next.

She Awakens!

This week is about preparation for the first firing of the spring. Wednesday, we will take down the curtains, prep the floor and walls, split some wood. Thursday, we will load and preheat. Friday we fire!

We'll get some new photos up as the week progresses...

The Kiln is Covered

Wood is covered as well as you can see. We should be in good shape for the spring. Nora and Betsy prepped wood today - hopefully it will become a standard Thursday thing. Starting this early, we could easily have a couple of cords ready by March!