Successful Firing with Local Clay

This piece was fired next to our side stoking area and got some nice effects from the embers.

We succeeded at keeping our latest firing in the Manabigama kiln away from a lot of reduction, hoping this would help prevent bloating in the clay. We had very minimal bloating, but we did reach nearly cone 12 in the front. We wanted to keep it at cone 10. Most of the clay in the this load is my local clay, high in iron and it tends to bloat at high temperatures and when the kiln has a lot of reduction.

We were very pleased with the results, and look forward to firing more local clay in the wood kiln. It was a slow firing, maintaining a rate of increase of 100 degrees an hour for most of the firing. The kiln didn't seem to want to climb faster than that, even when we tried to.

It was an overcast day, and it's been raining much of this week.

We think we'll continue with the side stoking, but not put a low shelf between the ember bed and the back of the kiln. This seemed to keep the flame from side stoking all going out the bottom exit flues.

More pictures can be viewed at my Facebook page.

Local clay pitcher, natural ash