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!

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...