Unloaded everything yesterday and am in the process of cleaning up. Nothing was over fired, which is not so good. Lots of under fired stuff, some of which is getting refired in the gas kiln today. From the standpoint of a first firing, everything was a huge success, because every decision I made was reflected in the results coming out of the kiln, whether or not the pots looked great. I certainly know where I went wrong, and made some interesting discoveries. Things to repeat next time, and things to avoid.

 Cones pictured are 9,10,11,12, and 13

 Actually got this katakuchi out of the bowl with minimum damage to either.

 Just the rear stack left to unload.

Rear stack cones. 9 and 10 flat, with 11 about 30% over.

One of the biggest lessons I learned (yet again) is not to pay much attention to the thermocouples. We stoked the kiln for a good 10 hours with very little rise in temp in the front/middle of the first chamber. I was getting very frustrated, and the TC read 1130C at it’s highest. Finally, I remembered that I’d put in cones. The top cone pack in front showed 9 and 10 flat, and 12 about half over. So that puts the real temp/heat work at around 1320C give or take. Just  a bit of a difference from the TC!

Main thing to take into the next firing: fire for more than 2 days, even for glazes, but especially for the unglazed work, and bury as much as possible in embers, even the glazed work.

Well, the kiln firing happened and that sucker just ’bout kicked my butt. What a different experience from firing gas and electric. Here are just a couple of things I learned from firing the wood kiln:

1. Kilns are very hot.
2. When you open the doors and hole covers the heat comes out.
3. I look kind of funny with half of my eyebrows gone.

The whole firing went off pretty well considering. We only had one bit of drama, and that was when the front stoke hole cover dropped off just as Tsuruta san had finished stoking. The castable cover fell out of the metal frame and flames were shooting out and up from the front of the kiln, which is not a desirable situation. After an initial moment of panic, we covered the front hole with fiber and managed to get the castable back in its frame, and tightened everything up again. It only took us about 5 minutes, and lasted the rest of the firing.

Without going into great detail, here are some pictures:

Up to about 900C there was very little smoke

 Mike stoking

 Mike stoking Daniels work shorts

 Mike stoking Carmens work jeans

 Mike stoking Craigs work gloves

 Tsuruta san checking the temps

 Pretty peep holes

Stoking the clothing was, I thought, a good christening for the new kiln. I tossed in my holy gloves as well, we’ll see just what effect jeans, shorts, and 2 pair of holy gloves had after the kiln cools enough to unload.

More pictures, from the front stoke hole:

 This last one is a bit difficult to tell, but it is the fiber covered 2nd chamber glowing in the dark after we shut everything up and the sun went down.

Now just looking forward to unloading the kiln, which will probably be Wed or Thurs. From initial peeks, it does look like there are some over fired and under fired areas, but that is not unexpected, especially this first time.

Lit the fire in the kiln again today, but didn’t go over 130C, just spent all day watching steam come out of the kiln. Got the thermocouple connectors hung over the kiln, high enough where they will not be affected by heat (hopefully).

This last pic is the temp readout on my netbook in the studio. All three thermocouples transmit a reading every 10 seconds. There is also a line graph readout which can be displayed, and recorded and saved. Nifty, huh? Also, there is apparently yet another Java update available.

Here’s the finished front stoke hole cover made of semi insulating castable. We’ll see how well it holds up.

 The green hose is for the pump. Still have to pump out the sump about 6 times a day, since it has been raining lately. Water just seeps in from the sides and it slowly fills. Working on getting an automatic sump pump with float switches so I won’t have to worry about waking up in the morning to a fire box full of water.

After starting the fire in the chimney, I got the damper hung  and pulled it up. I kept stoking wood at the chimney to get it warm, and between stokes I was hanging the front stoke hole cover. Once that was done, I started the fire in the front to warm the kiln and dry it, and the ware, out.

I can’t describe how it feels to finally have a fire burning in this kiln. Just for fun I connected up the thermocouples and monitored the temperature on my PC. The door hanging went really well. It hangs just so, with enough friction to keep it from swinging around, but light enough that when you move it, it feels weightless. Did the preheating thing for a couple of hours before clamming up the front and back and coming inside. I’ll start it up again in the morning, and go the whole day, get everything nice and dry, then Friday morning we’ll start the ‘real’ firing.

After bricking up the 2nd chamber door, I lit a fire in the base of the chimney to preheat it. It really pulled the air up, even as I started the fire, so worrying about the chimney’s ability to pull enough may not be necessary.

Finished loading the second chamber and bricked up the door. Ended up barely having enough shelves for the ware, as the used shelves I just bought turned out to have some cracks on close inspection. After all, it looks like 10 or more shelves out of 40 have cracks. So I set them aside, and the guy who sold them to me will replace them with good ones. But that means I couldn’t use them this time around. Barely had enough shelves to finish the load, but it worked out. Just 3 pieces didn’t make it in. As you can see from the pics, the second chamber is not even close to full.

Used every last straight brick on the door, and got a bit creative with brick scraps, because I didn’t want to cut a bunch of halves. Having the door recessed really helped with the brick fit at the edges.