Firing a wood kiln is Hot work! So when the summer heat rolled around, we put Puff the Desert Dragon Wood Kiln to bed. We had planned for a firing in November during the summer months, so I made a bunch of pots late this summer with Puff in mind - fun vases and cups with lots of slip, and dents and bumps for the ash to bend around.
As the November firing date drew near I realized I would not be around for the planned weekend (Oh no!). I didn't want to miss out, and I was chomping at the bit to fire Puff again. So I recruited Tracy, another pottery friend who was also ready to fire again, and we decided we'd do it - just the 2 of us.
We had plenty of pots to fill her up, though we did Not have plenty of time. We both work day jobs, and needed to fit this firing into a weekend. So it was a busy weekend! We still needed to glaze as well, so Thursday evening - Saturday evening we both worked HARD to get our pieces glazed and loaded into the kiln.
We started the firing Sunday morning at about 4:30 am, and fired her pretty aggressively (lots of stoking) until about 7 pm on Sunday. We were both BEAT at this point, but excited! We opened her up a few days later, and were rewarded for all our hard work!
The kiln just after a stoke, near peak temperature. Check out that little fireball at the top!
Puff, freshly opened.
Some of Tracy's beautiful results.
Some of my Beautiful results.