Celebration Setup

Setup at the Celebration of Seagrove Potters took place this afternoon. I set up my camera and used the "intervalometer" setting on my Canon S3 to shoot a picture every 10 minutes. I could only get one aisle in the camera viewfinder. Wish I had a fisheye lense.

Anyway, here it is:

Second firing

Flames billow out of kiln,
bursting with brilliance.

Firing number two went pretty well, as far as I can tell. My wife, Mary, and I stoked from 6 .m. until 9:20 p.m. We were exhausted, as we had spent the previous day loading (and last-minute glazing) until 10 p.m.

We attempted to fire the same as the first firing, stoking every 10 minutes or so, with a neutral environment, then heavy reduction the last two or three hours. We slowed the firing down for the first 1,000 degrees as we had a large raw pot inside. Cone 13 was tipping in the front and cone 10 was tipping in the back when we sealed up the kiln, which we did more efficiently than the first time. I was a bit worried when flames started forming as in the picture above, but they slowly subsided and they weren't near any wood.

Peaking inside tonight, I believe we had cooler pots toward the back than the first time. I saw one pot with a heavy coat of terra sigilatta that looked interesting. We'll unload Wednesday, clean up the pots and pack them up for taking them to Seagrove Thursday for the Celebration of Seagrove Potters.

Second firing in Manabigama underway

Sparks fly during early stoking.

I packed my pots a little tighter in the second kiln firing in my Manabigama, preheating overnight with one burner just because of all the rain we had recently. I'll have plenty of wood-fired pots for the second annual Celebration of Seagrove Potters this coming weekend.

I've participated in many wood firings, but this is the first kiln I've fired by myself that wasn't an electric kiln. So, I'm still learning. Thank you John Thies for answering all my questions and guiding me through the process of building the kiln. Following John's suggestions on firing the kiln that he and others designed, I fired my first load successfully and the results were excellent. Being color challenged in red, green, browns, I've had to rely on others to tell me about the beautiful subtle colors on the pots. I can see them, but I don't know what color they are.

I'm firing this load of pots in the same manner as the previous firing, hoping for similar results. We'll see soon. Like the first firing, most of the pots are only glazed on the inside, allowing the flame and ash to decorate the pots. I'm looking forward to many successful firings.

Hope to see some of you at the Celebration.

Pots from first wood firing

Inside the kiln

The weather was crap today for unloading my first firing, but I went ahead on schedule. I had to work in the rain and secure a big piece of black plastic and some tin around the kiln to keep the driving rain from soaking everything.

Everyone was pleased with the results. Two large platters came out beautiful, but the one extra thick one that I set on its side cracked, as well as a nice bottle in the front. We had some beautiful results, and I'll share some individual pictures, but for now, here's what we found when we opened up the kiln.

I had already taken out several small pots through the stoke hole.

Big platter that cracked on the left

Well done. Cheers.

Unloading Wednesday

I'll be unloading the kiln tomorrow afternoon. Someone's filming the unloading as a high school project, so we'll wait until he can get here.

First Pot

I lifted this pot out with a long iron tooth pick of sorts
that the blacksmith fashioned for me, the first pot
out of the kiln, and the experience of pulling it out and
examining it hit me a few minutes later after taking
a picture of it and sitting down in front of my
laptop computer to view the picture.

"Moments are the sum of all the previous moments we've experienced."