Well THIS can’t be good!!!

While I was in the Lillstreet kiln room tonight I saw this kiln shelf sitting in the corner. Another total meltdown!!! Seems to happen about once or twice a year… when a low-fire clay gets into a high-fire kiln. You never want to see this – or the note that goes with it!!! Always a sigh of relief when I can tell it is NOT one of my students!!!

As I’m finally putting myself to bed, I just remembered I didn’t finish the day with a shot of the kiln as I put it to bed too! Sure, I may have gotten distracted by SNL… and their take on today’s historic events… but here it is. A glowing hot soda kiln. Turned off. Suddenly quiet. Cooling tomorrow. Can’t wait to see what kind of “magic” might have happened inside. Cuz’ this looked pretty magical at the end on the outside too!!!

A few hours into the kiln firing, and it was time to put it into “reduction”… which means an imbalance of the air-to-gas ratio. You reduce the proportion of air to help seal-up the porous pots, solidify them and make them vitrified. It’s also when you start to see some fun flames shooting out of the kiln!

It was “all systems go” this morning when I came back to the studio. Set the damper, the vents, the peeps and everything else as I turned on the kiln for the long day ahead!

Closed up for the firing… it was a long evening of kiln loading last night. But always satisfying when you get all the bricks in the door frame. Hoping that everything is well-placed, nothing tips over, and no chunks of random kiln bits get inside anything! It was late when I finished last night… and early when I started firing this morning!!!

And there it is… a well thought-out, three-dimensional puzzle of shelves, bricks & pots!!! I always want to squeeze in as many pots as possible, but you need to leave enough air space for the soda atmosphere to move around the pots to create the magic! Lots of shelves… lots of pots… and all fingers crossed!!!

Brick by brick, shelf by shelf, pot by pot… and eventually the back stack was done. Then it was onto loading the front stack which is two shelves deep, so twice as many pots!!!

Last night I loaded the soda kiln with a lot of work… but I’m always struck by the empty kiln before loading. An empty kiln full of potential… and a lot of really cool soda build-up “patina” on the bricks!!!

Gotta LOVE these four letters!!!…
always comes with a small sigh of relief!!!

Just a few more quick pics from my soda kiln! These pieces were the ones facing the front door… where they get blasted with a bit more soda than the rest of the kiln. Loving some of the colored flashing slip effects & the textured orange-peel surfaces!