This is a picture of a firing that we did just before our Holiday Show. It's just getting dark and the kiln is very hot at this point. I wish I could say that every thing turned out well, but it did not. One of the bottom shelves warped badly and the whole stack fell. We had to chip a lot of stuff out of the kiln and then repair the brick with a castable refractory, and, as of now, I have not fired it again while waiting for the refractory to dry completely, but it's ready to go now and I hope to fire it soon.
7 comments:
Sorry about the warped shelf, hope all goes well next time.
Good to see you back at the blogging!
Hey John,
Nick Friedman here(Duckpond Pottery fame). I was so glad to come across your blog recently and to see your still at down there. I've been living and running my shop up in North Carolina and haven't been back to Florida(even for shows)in several years now. The photograph in this post caught my eye. Are you firing electric reduction? I thought I was one of the few people out there on the fringe doing this. I'd love to exchange notes with you on this regarding your successes and failures with this. Do you have any blog entries relating to this explicitly? Please fill me in. I talked to Greenbaum just the other day. Have you seen his bells? Quite impressive even for him. Take care John. Look forward to keeping up with your blog.
Nick Friedman
The Duckpond Pottery
Brevard, North Carolina
John, Is this an old electric kiln converted to gas???? Do I see one burner below? What ever happened to Terry Fallon's kilns?
JoAnn
Hi Joann,
This is an old Bailey electric that got converted to a gas kiln with a Little Bertha burner straight in from the middle of the bottom. It fires very nicely.
Terry is ramping up his Fallonator again, starting with selling reduction units that retrofit an existing electric kiln, like Avi had at Phil's. It looks like I will have to do a post on these.
John
Do you do body and glaze reduction in your firings? Or just glaze reduction? or Reduction cooling? How long do your firings take? to cone 10?
Sorry about all the questions
Hi Joann,
It all depends on what I am firing. For copper reds I have found an early body reduction at about 012 works for me. I also fire stoneware in with copper reds and those come out fine too. I think glaze reduction is kind of a myth; most everything happens before that point. I was originally afraid to clear the kiln with stoneware in it but it's fine to do that.
There are certain effects that are better if they are reduced in cooling but I don't know what they are.
In the little kiln I can go to cone 10 in about 4 hours but prefer to go a little slower, maybe 6 hours, but I am using it as a test kiln and almost always have just a few pots. It is a very nice kiln, I have gotten some really good stuff from it, and it was very inexpensive because I had most everything already. Like the old kiln.
I may not end up using it much because I am getting a Fallonator add on unit soon.
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