Sunday, October 9, 2011

all fired up...



yesterday we fired the ground hog kiln, at the NC Pottery Center, for the second time. we felt we would get better results firing longer and slower than the last time and jeff had quite a few raw pots in there. we preheated overnight and finished at about 2:00 a.m. this morning...


loading this kiln is the most painful thing. you have to crawl in on your belly to load. thank you jeff for loading the really claustrophobic, back of the kiln!

these are the pots right in front of the firebox... they should be nice and toasty.


Jeff Brown, Rob Buller, and Levi Mahan, stoking the kiln


roaring flames coming out of the chimney... that's the fun part!


ready to add salt... we pour the salt on flat boards that we then use to stoke in the front firebox. we also poured salt through the peeps on the top of the kiln. we used 30 pounds of salt.

we also did some side stoking during this firing, which we didn't do the last time. this was in hopes of getting a higher temperature in the back of the kiln. it was colder than the front last time. it took some time, but we did end up with ^11 down in both the front and the back.
tuesday is unloading day.

6 comments:

  1. I hope it went well! Off to NH again:) And what a great time to see some colorful foliage.

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  2. That's a lot of work, don't know how you do it all, hope they're great surfaces.

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  3. Love these pix and your comments. Exciting!

    Toes crossed for great results!

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