Firing Log

The anagama has been standing empty for about three or four hours now. As it turns out, the damage was worse than I thought — the very back row of shelves tipped forward creating a domino effect. C’est la vie. I’ve been using soaps (bricks cut in half lengthwise) as kiln posts. Forget that! Whole bricks only from now on. There is so much movement during the firing, I think I need the extra stability whole bricks will provide. Secondly, fewer shelves and more large floor to ceiling pieces.

I’ll get a handful of usuable pieces out of this firing — almost everything is a total loss. I’m “so stoked” though — truly, I couldn’t be happier. The glaze is amazing despite being a bit overfired (too much of it drooled off the work), but I finally think I have a handle on the appropriate air/fuel mixture and a reasonable idea of how much empty space the anagama requires. The fire itself needs room to expand or it simply takes all its good stuff out the chimney. Plus, I have a good plan for the next firing for improved effects. It’s taken three years of “doing it wrong” to get here, but I think progress will accelerate from this point on. That’s why I’m so satisified with this disaster.

Without further ado then, check out the pictures! Notes:

• These are fresh out of the kiln — no grinding has been done on them yet.
• There are lots of scars due to the extensive collapsing.
• This page is just a rough draft of what I’ll eventually put in my website.
• Small pics link to medium sized pictures 1024 pixels wide.
• No comments on the pics except that my wadding based clay exceded my expecations — look for the very glassy blue/green piece w/ speckles. The body needs some tweaking, but it’s sweet! Of course, no real fire color on it because of the massive amount of feldspar sand I dumped in it — still, never ignore serendipity.

I should also note, all these little pics are links to medium sized versions (1024 pixels wide) — don’t you just hate a too small picture when you want to see detail? I know I do.

Starting at the end, here is a sunrise shot of Mt. Baker taken a short time after the firing ended. No firing record would be complete without reference to our local volcano.

And a little north of Mt. Baker some pretty gold:

This is what I look like at 5 or 6 am, 100+ hours from my last shower:

Andrea showed up unexpectedly at about midnight the last night of the firing. She said she wanted to stoke for a little while — I said “sure” (she’s stoked before). At one point she said she really ought to get going, I said “do you mind if just take a 5 minute nap” — sitting on the bench on the left side of the kiln pit, back against a cinder block wall, I then slept like a log till 4 am when I awoke with terrible leg and butt cramps. Andrea Saved the Day — there’s no way I could have stoked all night the last night.

Pull from the first day (18 hours wood):

Pull from the second day (42 hours wood):

Kiln Demons basking in the chimney’s warmth:

An overall view of the pit. Silver supervising:

Preheating with gas. See how wet the kiln is to start? The base bricks didn’t fully dry out till the third day of wood firing:

Anagama chimney shot:

And WOO-HOO! — one more day gone by and no peeking. This note is for Frank. ;-)