So while I was at the firing, I had a bunch of fun, once again, with the video features of my canon sd850.  The first bits to be processed and uploaded are some time lapse videos of loading the kiln.  The process of loading a kiln ends up being pretty slow and complex.  I’m writing up an explanation of all the factors that go into that slowness, but decided to put them in a separate post.  For now, you can enjoy the process of loading a kiln at x30 speed and set to fun music.  It’s pretty fascinating, really.

Loading a kiln, from the inside:  This video is shot from one of the stoke holes, and follows the loading of the shelf after the middle firebox.  Since it’s so close to the middle firebox, where we’ll be putting in sidestoking wood, we’re being careful not to put anything small on the back side of the shelf that might get knocked over.  It’s about 3 hours boiled down to 5 minutes.

Loading a Kiln, from the outside:  This video is of loading the next set of two shelves, but shot from outside of the kiln entrance.  It really shows a different aspect of the process.  For every person in the kiln there’s another few outside, prepping the pots, organizing, discussing, shooting the breeze, and just hanging around. It covers about 2 hours in 4 minutes.

I’ve just discovered you can watch these in higher quality, but only on the Youtube website.  So follow them back to their youtube pages for a less grainy version.