…and DONE!!!

Always good to see those four letters!!!

Finally loading the bisque kiln… putting in a LOT of mugs on the bottom layers!!! You know they’re my favorite thing to make, so this has been the perfect project to keep me busy for awhile!

Always an exciting end to a soda-firing!!! The addition of the soda mixture into the kiln makes it quite volatile with flames shooting out every crevice & gap in the bricks! Gotta love playing with fire… it’s the waiting for it to cool that’s no fun. Always anxious to see the results!!!

So far so good! The firing is going smoothly so far. We’re in body reduction right now… hence the flames peeking out already. By reducing the air to gas ratio, it makes the flames seek out air anywhere it can find it. Including sucking it out of the porous clay to make the pots more solid & vitrified.

So my soda kiln loading took awhile tonight, but went very smoothly…
until I saw THIS!!!

Apparently whoever unloaded from the soda kiln last didn’t get the whole brick out of the right side peep as it was fused in place! Of course I only noticed this after the door was fully bricked up!!! This side peep is one of the ports that your need to insert the soda into the kiln. This brick-blocked-port is a problem!!! It took awhile to chisel it out… now hoping that it didn’t leave any bad debris inside the kiln?!

And there it is… all bricked up for the night. For tomorrow I turn it on for a full day of firing. Always a LONG day… but the payoff is always good in the end. Plus, it’s a great day to do some glazing of class demo pieces & studio cleaning!!! Busy work that I keep putting off… but tomorrow’s the day!

Front stack loaded… two shelves deep with a lot more pots. Quite a few mugs. You know they’re my favorite thing to make! I love loading the soda kiln… pot by pot, shelf by shelf until it’s full.

Now time to brick up the door… ugh.

Back stack packed & loaded… lots of pots already in the soda kiln.
And that’s just the back third of it!!!

An empty soda kiln filled with possibilities… and some really cool soda-covered bricks!!! Loving the crusty patina colored finish after a lot of soda-firings in this kiln!!!

Sometimes this is the best four-letter word!