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!

Winter Photos

Here's the wood we did not use the fall firings. We have about 2 cords of hardwood and 3 cords of softwood. The eaves obviously did not provide adequate protection for this amount of snow!



Obviously, the kiln did not get wrapped before this storm! Grrrrrr! Hopefully, we'll get some warm days to get rid of the snow and get this baby wrapped!

Putting the Kiln to bed

Nora and I met with Joe to figure out how best to winterize GreenFire. We'll post some photos once it is all wrapped up like a present. Major snowstorm today (12 inches!). I'll take a trek over to the site to see how it's doing...

Adventure Firing Unloading

Here's part of the crew at the opening of the kiln after our short "Adventure Firing". Added wood ash to the fire box, soda ash to the side stokes. 10 hours of firing.
We noticed soda build-up on the underside of the roof. We will protect the roof (and walls and floor!) next time and into the future...
The firing revealed beautiful orange and rust tones where the wood ash blushed the clay. Soft grays and whites formed when it built up.
Beautiful green jewel tones were created where the soda ash was allowed to build up. This is an extreme example, but nonetheless shows what so many of the pieces were kissed with. We are excited to fire in this way next spring. We will probably put the kiln to bed for the winter, although there is a possibility of one more firing...

Adventure Firing!

The kiln is cooling now after our "Guinness" day of adventure firing. This was the 4th firing of the kiln in two weeks and we tried a number of different things. We fired in about the shortest time possible (7am until 5pm). We introduced wood ash into the firebox periodically. We introduced soda ash into the side stoke holes in the last couple of hours. Here is a shot of our mix of sawdust, soda ash, and hot water being ladled onto flat wood.
Wayne Fuerst loading the soda into the side stoke hole.

We'll unload tomorrow and see the results!

Raku Day at GreenFire

Steven Branfman came by to check out our 3rd firing. Here's an image of his pots being slowly introduced into the raku chamber. We had already taken some pots out and we were in the middle of the wood fire. We warmed up his tea bowls by placing them in the pizza oven for 15 minutes, then sitting them on sill of the raku chamber, and then we slowly pushed them in on thin soft-brick "boats". We then bricked up the chamber, and left them in for about half an hour. They turned out beautiful!
Great shot of Steven and Masakazu in front of the fire door!

Images from the unloading - Firing #2

This shot is from the floor, the passage way from the ash pit to the main chamber.

This is a view of the 3rd shelf, about halfway down the chamber. You can see the small niches on the left, just under the chimney. We got great flashing, ashmelt, and movement in just 13 hours! We are loading today for the 3rd firing, which we will fire for more time, perhaps 30 hours or so. More updates to come.