04.09.2010
Another loaded bisque kiln… layer by layer… piece by piece… firing today!!!
Love the challenge of stacking, nesting and piling in of as much work as you can fit in.
Guess I’m going to need to do some glazing – and get a soda kiln scheduled soon!
Layer One – flower pots, mugs and tiles!
Layer Two – bowls, flower pots, tumblers and more tiles.
Layer Three -bowls, mugs and a LOT more tiles!!!
Layer Four – bowls, flower pots, tumblers and tiles!
So while my bisque kiln cools tomorrow…
I’m taking a day off and heading out of town for a little hiking in the woods!
Hey Gary do you always bisque fire your tiles vertically?
We just unloaded a glaze firing of tile and loaded up another bisque load.
I don’t have any sort of tile setters that will hold the 170 3×7 subway tiles we just glazed so I had to use 14 shelves in the kiln. Took almost 48 hours to cool from 04. I’m going to make some stoneware stacking corners so we can stack them around 4 high in the future. All the commercial setters can’t handle tiles as thick as we make.
HEY SCOTT – As you may have noticed, I’m pretty much willing to stack my bisque in any way that I can squeeze more in. Which I guess generally does make the tiles go vertically?! No other reason than that. My understanding has always been that my cone 06 bisque temperature is not hot enough to warp any of my greenware as it fires. And then my tiles are glazed fired horizontally… the small ones are generally soda fired. So each one gets individually wadded and placed in the kiln. Since they are already so textural, I don’t really care too much if they warp just a bit. As for tile setters, I don’t use them, as my tiles are more “kiln filler” to fit in between all of the bowls & mugs as I load the glaze kiln. I typically don’t do large scale tile installations that would require me to do a whole kiln of just tiles! 48 hours to cool?… sounds like a good excuse to go outside and play?!!!
Do you consider cutting door casing on the front porch playing? If so we had it covered.
We make lots of tile. It’s all lo fire earthenware, bisque to 04 glaze to 06 or 05. With all those shelves in the kiln and only an inch post between them it was as if it was a solid load in the kiln. Big heat mass to cool off. We found a free kiln on craigslist that just needs a new kiln sitter that we can start using and get a faster turn around on tile jobs. One load of bisque usually means 3 loads of glaze.