Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Closing the Kiln

Last Tuesday before we started to fire the pottery kiln, we had to close it up except for the portals where we would be putting in the wood to stoke the fire.

Ken had filled the kiln and all the rolling shelves called cars or trolleys.  






And he had filled the sides of the inside of the kiln, too.


He wants to get as many pieces into the kiln as possible, but we are careful when we close up not to tip or break any.  I am on the chimney end of the kin winding up a cable that is attached to the underside of a car.You can see the cable on the floor of the kiln here.









Ken is at the other end of the kiln watching and calling out to me if I need to stop so he can adjust pottery placement to avoid knocking pots off the shelves.














Here he is moving pots that could be pushed off their shelf.
















We repeat this process for each of the cars and the big door at the end.


 Once this is done, Ken is ready to get some barrels up to light a match and start the fire.

2 comments:

  1. This is quite a spectacular event. How long does it take for the kiln to heat up and then cool down? Any idea how many pieces were fired?
    Thanks for the updates. It reminds me of the old barn raising....
    Kim S.

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  2. The kiln holds between 2000 and 3000 pots.We start Wednesday and go to Saturday night. Four days around the clock. We are getting to cone 10, about 2300 degrees. We let it cool down a little over a week, then take everything out, clean it, price it, pull the orders, and then we will be part of the Earth Arts show the first weekend in May.

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