I’ve been on shift since 4, and right now we’re at 2250 in front, and 2100 in back. I’m on the back of the kiln, and have been fighting with it for the last hour. It went down to 2040. I had to switch to small rapid stokes (3 pieces at once) from larger stokes (7 pieces). I ask Steve, who’s down at the front, as to how many pieces he’s been putting in – “how ever many pieces he #%}^* well feels like”

I’ve been trying to use the iphone wordpress app. It’s decent, but in this area of sketchy phone reception, it does have a few frustrating bugs. If a post fails halfway through sending, it will then crash every time you try to send it again, and you’ll have rewrite it. This post will be a little shorter than it once was.
Anyway, when I last checked the kiln a few hours ago, it was at 950 degrees. The day shift has it now. I’m on shift from 4pm to 12:30am. We started the kiln at 9 last night. For the first 900 degrees, the fire is outside the kiln, in the primary air intake. This lets us control the fire more easily, heating the kiln up slowly, as to not shock the pots.

So, far too early tomorrow morning, I will head off to Seabeck, WA for our woodfiring.  I’ll have my iphone, so it will be my goal to post a series of small updates during the firing.  I will apologize in advance for the spelling, since the wordpress iphone app lacks any form of spell check.

Here’s a shot of some of my preparations.  I have three giant bins this size, along with a milk crate of tiny pieces.  I’ve taken to using pillow stuffing to protect some of the delicate wings of my critters.  However, in this shot, I think laziness played more of a role than prudence. They do look like they’re taking a nap in a cloud, though.

Since the quality of the Youtube version of the unloading was so poor, I decided to uploaded to Vimeo, one of the many competitors that keep popping up.  It had its share of frustrations as well in the upload process, but I’m much happier with the final video.

Unloading an Anagama from Eva Funderburgh on Vimeo.