All set

The kiln is packed and the wood is split and stacked. Kettle, radio, ipod and food all in place. Celebratory post-firing beer waiting in the wings.

The fire will be lit first thing + Andy is over later to help out. Fingers crossed for no rain!

Packed and ready to go

Yep - after a flurry of glazing and wadding and prop making I was finally ready to pack the nice clean kiln this week. I decided to pack a little looser than last time - fewer pieces but more room for flame paths around the stack.

This is the (slightly wonky - me not the stack!) view from the firebox. A couple of larger pieces on the floor and the usual single shelf layer. This next photo shows the back of the rear chamber stack. There are 2 stacks of this size in the chamber. The next has only 2 shelves and some tall pieces up at the top. I'm interested to see how this effects the temperatures and flame paths during the firing.

It's all bricked up now and waiting until next week for the firing. I'm away for a lecture/slide show/demonstration and exhibition and hopefully by next week the rain will have stopped and the wind will be from a better direction.

The excitement mounts

I'm now well into probably my favourite time within a working practice that is, fortunately for me, packed full of very enjoyable processes. The biscuit firings are done, the rocks are finally crushed and ball milled to dust, the wood is (finally) dry in not so neat stacks and I am busy planning the pack for the next firing. The glaze book is open and I'm blending and mixing.

The image is of my trusty steel mortar and pestle. I use this to get the rocks down to grit size so that they can be ball milled. The last rock was a rhyolite from Langdale in the Lake District, which is a fine particled intermediate volcanic rock created from compacted volcanic ash. Despite calcining it is very hard + my shoulders are still feeling it. Even the ball mill struggled. The planning of the pack is very important. Some rocks need plenty of heat and action from the wood to achieve their best while others need protection and a slightly lower temperature. I can also adjust the recipes according to where the piece is placed in the kiln.

The kiln is all cleaned out and ready - ash saved and the floor carefully chiseled to remove setters and glaze runs. This image shows the view from the back chamber into the catenary arch firebox, showing the front grate, packing space and sidestoke grate. Two more days of glazing and then the packing starts. It's a time of real excitement, loaded with possibilities and anticipation.

Holidays over and summer is here.

It's been a long time since my last post and while I did squeeze in a holiday and a festival I've been hard at work preparing for the next firing.

Now the sun has finally come out I have been splitting wood + leaving it out in the sun to dry out. Some of the new wood I got 3 months ago has already started going mouldy due to the incessant rain, so though this is well over a year old, I'm not sure how high its moisture content is. I have some hornbeam left over from the last firing but most of this is oak and red oak. Should be interesting.

First biscuit firing is done and was successful. These are made with a couple of Devon secondary kaolins, which are extremely prone to fire cracking. As you can see they are still in one piece. The kiln is drying out another load and I am crushing and ball milling rocks ready for glazing.

Great firing weather

Finally all my tests dried out and I fired the test kiln up to cone 10, including the clay test bars from North Devon. Here they are in the glorious sun, weighed, measured and ready for boiling.

Boiling? Yes - key stage in porosity testing so that I can get a better idea of how they will behave in larger forms in a glaze firing. ND1 is the clay from Doug's place + sure it's a little overfired, but really surprisingly good. I also put some glazed test rings in to get an idea of glaze fit and got some absolutely spectacular shelling.

Also, now my grog is fired, I'm making some larger pots for the next woodfiring.

Testing times.

Cloud, rain, cloud rain, rain rain, sun(!), HAIL....etc ad infinitum. I've been trying to crush clay for grog but the weather has been against me. I've spent most of the time dragging buckets under cover and out again but did manage to make up all the shrinkage bars from the clays that I collected on my last trip to Devon. One of them is a clay I got from near Doug, which was by far the easiest to use. Very little residue and almost useable as dug. The others are highly compacted and often difficult to crush, but their plasticity seems very good.

The bars will be used to measure shrinkage (drying and firing) and also porosity once fired to top temperature. The test rings will be glazed to check crazing or likelihood of shelling. I think that some of the clays are very high in silica.

Trumpet blowing

Just back from the Art in Clay event at Hatfield this year and, despite the appalling weather, it was a great weekend. I did a presentation on my project, which was well received, sold some work, managed to enjoy the Saturday night BBQ without getting hypothermia and.....won the Peer's award. Every exhibitor gets to vote for someone at the event and this year it was me. I am very chuffed.

There was some great work on display over the weekend + it was good to catch up with everyone, including fellow bloggers Doug, Hannah and Andy. Free stand next year so it's already time to start thinking about 2013.