And!...... the kiln is loaded

So everything is bisque fired. I had one pot crack, only a small but, but it's on the bottom so it's useless as a functional piece and not a piece I can sell.

The kiln is loaded. Again, I learned a lot of things that we need to change with our experiments with soda fire at the community studio. We did glaze today, all new to all of us. They are ^6 reduction glazes. I took good notes so I will know later what I put where. All are food safe. Here, because the soda fire IS an atmospheric glaze process, I put little glaze on the pots. Most of it was as a liner but a bit of decoration on the outside as well.

Major learnings:
we need to do a Kiln Glaze/Sealant to protect the kiln bricks, not just kiln washing the shelves.  We need to spray the soda differently (I will discuss this more next posting after we are done firing). We need to have a shelf ABOVE the work and below the flue hole. This creates something closer to a downdraft in the updraft kiln.  Also with the shelves, the posts were wadded on both ends.

So here is a look at the two kilns we filled. Not huge kilns, and really because the shelving is arranged differently (needing a top shelf that is empty, a large fire box on the bottom, using broken shelves) this does not load as much work as a same sized electric kiln