Hr 58. 2215f in front, 2067 back. Slowly gaining temp. Getting nice flame in the stack
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Hour 54. 2183f in front, 2032 in back. Started side stoking a bit ago.
Almost half way done!
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Hour 34. 1570f in front, 1142f in back. Started body reduction, so lots of smoke
Body reduction is the process of pulling metal oxides to the surface of the clay, darkening the colors. You close up the air in the kiln, creating a reducing (oxygen starved) atmosphere. You do this early, before glazes have started to melt. We’ll do this twice, once for the start if the kiln, once for the back.
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Hour 30, 1125 in front, 900f in back. Turns out the pyrometer wasn’t broken, the kiln was just damp.
Off to a slow start, but we’re only a few hours behind the last few firings now.
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Wood firing hour 4. We aren’t sure what the temperature is, since the thermocouple isn’t working.
It should be 200 or 300f in the front of the kiln. The goal at this point is to slowly heat everything up at about 50f an hour. We start with the fire outside the kiln. Not too worried about the thermocouple, we’ll fix it once people are awake.
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