Kitchen Potting: Out of the Kitchen and Into the Fire

           The holidays found me down in North Carolina, where I left the old electric kiln I picked up off of Craigslist. Finally some time to tackle the electric to gas conversion! I brought along a few boxes of dried pots packed in newspapers for a test firing.

           Well, I was unable to make it to the store to get kiln-building supplies for a few days, so I impatiently stashed a batch of pots under the grate in the house fireplace and started firing with wood. The pots were all at least a few months dry and the hickory fire provided a fairly gradual warmup. 

 

 

          I kept adding a log or two every half hour and raking the embers around the pots till they were nested in about 6 inches of ash and coals. After five hours, I let the fire die down and the next morning, I pulled out a couple bisqued pieces and a number of not-so-hard examples (those that sat around the outside edges). I rotated the latter to the inside and went ahead and fired again, adding a few extra pots, with about the same results. The center area (ca. 10 by 6 inches) under the grate made it to bisque temperatures but fell off sharply on all sides- pretty much what you’d expect.

My first 'firing'!

Second Batch

Traveling marmot Ferdinand unpacking the fireplace kiln- three or four different clay bodies here.