In mid-July we fired the Tin Man for the third time over at Careen’s place near Johnson Creek. We unloaded last week and we’ve improved by leaps and bounds. The kiln fired much more evenly and we added soda (baking and ash) for the first time giving the pots a nice sheen and some much more vivid colors on the clay. I didn’t use a single glaze this time on my work, a first.
Firing details and additional photos can be found on Careen’s blog
The Soulgama kiln was fired up last month out at Stephen Mickey’s place. I had a great time firing with everybody and I definitely came out with a few really sweet pots.
This time we decided to try tumble stacking the back section, which is typically the coolest part of the kiln overall. We managed to keep the back (the floor at least) around cone 10 (2350 deg F) while flattening cone 13 in the back of the middle section of the kiln. There was very little fusing of pots in the tumble stack due to excessive accumulation and melting of ash. We were going to attempt to cool the back in a reduced environment (for iron rich clay bodies) while allowing the front and middle to stay in an oxidized to neutral environment (for bright porcelain and lighter stoneware bodies), but it was ultimately decided that it was not worth the risk of muddling the brightness of the clay bodies and glazes in the middle and front sections (which hold the largest amount of pots by far).
{{post id=”soulgama-oct-2007-pics-vids” text=”Pictures and Videos”}} (Includes links to download the full sets)