Got the front door bricked in this morning while I was waiting for some help with the digging that needed to get done at the front. Beautiful weather for it all, heavy rain. My cousin in law, Kouki, and my friend Nakayama kun came by to help with the digging because they took pity on my for my recent back pain. So while they worked on that I did other things around the kiln that needed doing that don’t require heavy lifting, such as tacking insulating blanket on the rafters and beams closest to the chimney, and making peep and stoke hole covers.

Below is the door. These were some more scrounged bricks that I knew would be useful at some point, then never could find a use for them. Finally, they are living up to their potential. The nifty thing about them is that if they are in a space that is slightly too wide, or too narrow, one or two can be tapped in or out further to expand or contract the row. You can see in the pictures where a couple of the bricks are sticking out a bit because I did just that. At the top I switched over to IFB, and rather than cutting bricks to fit in the left over holes in the arch, I think it will be easier just to stuff the holes with scrap fiber.

 It’s more rain in the forecast through Thursday, so the first two days of firing will be wet. We’ll lay down some wood in the newly dug front, just to keep our feet dry. I went out for a few hours this evening and when I came back the water had filled up the area and was about an inch or two up into the firebox. I will really need an automatic sump pump in the sump which will be able to pump out water whenever the area starts to fill. Otherwise I never know what I’ll be waking up to. When the kiln is empty it is not that important, but I’d had to peek in the freshly packed kiln after a night of rain and see pots floating around…

The middle got finished yesterday, and today the front stack nearly got done. Just a couple of more big pieces to put in place, and some small guinomi to stick in here and there.

In the picture above, the tokkuri are nearly below the side stokes. If we can manage not to nail them in the firing, there’s a chance they will come out mighty nice.

As it turns out, there are enough pieces left to fill the second chamber to a respectable degree. That will start tomorrow. The second chamber will be fired to around cone six. Yesterday, I finished off the floor anticipating it would need a couple of days to set nice and hard for loading.

These next pictures are the front stack getting done. Most of the large pieces are going in front. As I knew I would, I forgot I was dealing with green ware and broke one of my large bowls when I was getting it off the shelf. I hate that popping noise that happens when the rim breaks off in your hands, don’t you?
The floor layer:

 First layer of shelves:

 Second layer:

 The top layer of shelves. These top shelves actually needed to be cut down so they would fit in that narrow width with the arch tapering.

 After much deliberation, the two largest pieces went to the top of the stack. All should go well  unless one of them decides to give up the ghost during the firing and falls apart onto other pieces.

Finished loading the rear of the first chamber today and will start on the middle and front tomorrow. It will be nice using the 8mm thin 35x37cm shelves after hefting those thick monsters up in that narrow rear space. That rear stack is 78cm from front to back.
 There are about 110 pots in the rear of the kiln. Could have fit many more, but I want to make sure that the flame gets around and not try anything daring until I have a few more firings under my belt. Some pots are staggered front to back, some are in straight rows, because I want to see if there is any difference in the outcome.

Just for kicks, there are 3 guinomi placed at the front of the stack at the base, just a few cm from where wood will be dropping in. If I can manage not to hit them, they might end up looking interesting. They are 3 different clays, for comparison.

Though I’d planned to pretty much ignore the second chamber for this first firing, it is looking like there will be enough pots to at least partially fill it. So, the second chamber will be getting loaded with low temp (about cone 6) work: feldspar glazes, a celadon-ish clear, white slip, and iron underglaze deco.

For all the stacking, I’m taking very careful notes about what is going where, knowing by now that no matter how sure I am that I will remember, after a week or so I never do.

Must not forget to place the cone packs before starting the middle section…

Loading has started.

 Spit is very convenient stuff.

 These are the feet for the roof tile kiln shelves that I’m using in the rear.

 Fun.

 The floor layer, grey ones glazed with half and half clay and ash. Red ones are 1/2 clay, 1/4 ash, 1/4 spar. Red ochre added to taste.

 Getting those shelves up and back there is fun with back pain.

 2nd layer. More of the half and half glaze. Also some madara glaze. I’m experimenting with things as far a stacking pattern goes, see what works and what doesn’t. Bottom layer was more staggered. These shelves have big voids, so upper layers may end up more in a row.

Now that the decision has been made to fire, there are all sorts of things that can no longer be ignored, like having stoke hole covers and doors. Unfortunately, it has been rather rainy lately, making the casting of the primary air a bit sketchy, so I reverted to my original plan for the primary air, for now. Later, when it’s dry weather again, I think I’d like to cast it. For now, the air looks like this:

Those are the same shelves I used to line the floor of the kiln and for grate bars, trimmed down to 69cm to fit in the doorway. The supports on either side are left over scrounged hard arch brick slabs, 23x23cm. With 4 or 5 of those shelves spanning the gap, the center support is probably not even necessary, but just in case… 

There are some more left over scrounged bricks that I am thinking about for the door, until I get the castable idea more developed. I’ll play with those tomorrow and post pictures.

I put together a form to make stoke hole covers this morning as well, and so far everything looks good. Here’s the form and slabs after I removed the outside frame, then some slabs shown in place just like how they’ll be during the firing. Everything seems to fit pretty tightly. The slabs are semi light castable, about 7cm thick, and 29x25cm wide. It will be interesting to see if/how well they hold up.

I think that I will bind them with angle iron on two sides vertically, with the angle iron extending a few inches beyond the bottom, so that the slabs will sort of stand on little legs, leaning against the hole. Then they can just be tilted back and forward again during stoking. If the seal ends up being too loose, then some fiber gasket will be cemented to the stoke hole bricks.

I may have mentioned in a previous post that I didn’t want to use a lot of my regular clay in the first firing, because it would be such a waste, so I got some store bought clay from a place I never tried before. Most of their clays are not much to my liking, but they have this one type, called Karatsu Kishidake, which has turned out to be nice stuff. Of course final judgement will have to wait until the kiln is unloaded, but for ease of throwing and trimming, with the potential for nice chirimen (crepe-like tearing) on the trimmed surfaces, it shows great potential, AND it’s cheap. Here are some pics of the Karatsu Kishidake which was used for some yunomi. (in an aside, I had a wonderful breakthrough making these yunomi. These plain tsutsu yunomi (cylinder shape) have always given me fits for some reason, but I finally figured out the right way of holding the cows tongue rib to make them quickly and best of all, non-wonky.)

2 styles of feet: My preference is the second one below, but that style of foot doesn’t look so good on a plain cylinder shape. Looks much better on an hourglass shape, wide at the hips and shoulders narrowing towards the waist.

Here are a few guinomi that are going in the first firing. Minamihata clay which is somewhat sticky, mixed with 30% pounded sandstone, and 10% Shirakawa Toseki porcelain stone sand from above Arita dam (sieved out of the river). Pinched and trimmed on the kickwheel.