Easter weekend my dad came up and we went to Corning for a wood-firing at the community college with Fred Herbst. We arrived Friday morning and loaded up the smaller train kiln.
Saturday morning we went to the kiln site at 10am and lit the fire, the Corning Community College students watched the kiln for that afternoon while we went to the Corning Glass Museum, and then went back that evening and watched the kiln all night. I had the 6-midnight shift (I was grateful for it, but Hartwick watched the kiln until 9am the next morning with Fred generously over seeing midnight to 6am.)
The smaller kiln takes about 35-40 hours to fire while the anagama to the left takes about 95 hours.
Above is looking across the fire box (the first part of the kiln where we put wood in,) and below is looking into the base of the chimney earlier on in the firing. The streak in the photo below might be molten ash falling out of the chimney.
Approximately at midnight, or 14 hours into the firing we reach the desired temperature at the top of the kiln, but keep firing steadily for another 15 hours to bring the bottom up to the same temperature. Obviously the kiln gets super hot and we continually load wood every 5-10 minutes and have to constantly poke the pile of coals to make room for more wood and help it burn hotter. We wear welding gloves to protect our hands, every time we finished loading wood the gloves would be smoking a little.
Here is some early results, more to come soon.
I'm loving porcelain's translucency, but I'm already craving heavy pots again.
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