July 2020 Soda Firing
With my knowledge of my test clay bodies from my last firing, I went ahead and mixed up 5 new clay bodies based on that research. I made a bunch of cups with these and was excited to fire them and see how they turn out. The beginning of this firing was miles better than the last one. I came in in the morning to find the kiln at 1719°F and was ready to fire the kiln up in temperature quickly so that I could focus a lot of my energy on the down-firing. The down-firing started off strong but with my luck, I encountered another technical issue with the thermocouples again.
Materials:
My porcelaneous stoneware with applied slip.
Stoneware clay body tests
basic soda and newman wadding.
Loading - Back Stack
Loading - Front Stack
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I loaded this kiln as I have been. Putting pots into the kiln close to each other but putting in a variety of heights on each shelf to allow the flame to flow through the pots. I have been enjoying putting pots on the floor of the kiln, close to the flu - there seems to be some great flame velocity in this area!
Yunomi sitting on a Newman wad patty on top of a plate.
Graph of Active Firing Time.
Notes from the down-firing:
Kept the kiln in reduction during this period.
Wet soft brick was used to plug up the 4 spray ports and replaced every 45 minutes.
At 1888°F I opened up the damper to reoxidize the kiln for a minute.
At hour 13 I began to have problems with the thermocouple and it eventually failed at hour 13.5.
After some digging around I found another one and replaced the faulty thermocouple at hour 14.25.
After that I continued down to 1587°F for a total of 6.5 hours of down-firing
Notes from firing up in temperature:
The firing went very smoothly and quickly.
675 grams of soda ash mixed with about 1 gallon of water were sprayed twice at hour 8 and hour 9.5 while in a reduced atmosphere.
The kiln soaked in reduction between spraying and during the soak before the down-firing.
Reached a healthy ^10.
Overall took 10.25 hours.
Plate and cup stack near the exit flu.
Plate (From picture to the left), Porcelaneous Stoneware with Applied Slip