Spring 2023 Firing of Puff the Desert Dragon Part 1

We fired up the wood kiln (Puff) back in April - it had been well over a year since our previous firing and I was so ready for it! Both the loading and the firing went pretty well, I’m feeling more confident with just about every firing, but of course there is still plenty of room for improvement. The firing was a bit over 15 hours; we reached a solid cone 10 throughout the kiln, and a solid cone 11 in quite a few spots. Note: cones are used to gauge the heat in the kiln (a bit more about that is described below).

I’ll break this up into 2 parts - part 1 will mostly be about the loading, and building the door. I’ll link a few video’s of the actual firing at the end of this post, and I’ll include a bit more about that in the second part.

These pictures show us finishing up the loading, and bricking up the door. We were pretty focused - I didn’t think to get any pictures until we were almost done. But you’ll get a nice overview of the loaded kiln and the door with the first few shots below.

Loaded!

We’re nearly finished loading here, you can see the wood panel we used to kneel on as we were loading. The firebox is in disarray, but before we brick up the door we will straighten up the bricks and the bars to create a grate - this is where the fire will be.
You can see the cone packs here that will measure the heat work in the kiln (they are the multi-colored spiky things in the front). Each cone represents a temperature. We know we’ve hit cone 10 when the cone 10 cone melts.

Starting to brick up the door.

We’ve just started the door here, we try to make the bottom half as wide and sturdy as we can with the bricks we have available. You can see here we’ve laid some bricks long-ways, and we’ve used some of our precious extra wide bricks on these first layers.
You can also see another shot of the cone packs. These in the front are meant to be visible as we are firing, and they range from cone 010 (around 1650 F), the dark red cone in the front, up to cone 12, the light grayish cone. Cone 10 is the pink one in the middle (that’s around 2380 F).

Building up the door

Here you can see Me and Mishy working away on the door. We’re starting to plan for our stoke hole around this level.

The stoke hole is complete!

Here we have tackled the stoke hole (this is a tricky spot). We’re using some cut pieces of klin shelf to create a ledge for our stoke hole cover, which is also a piece of kiln shelf.

Finally the door is done.

We’ll use some clay and mud to plug up the cracks, but the door is essentially done here. It’s not pretty, but it does it’s job just fine! The little metal table sitting in front will stay there - we will use it to lay the stoke hole cover on when we stoke the fire.

Building the door is tough, in part because it comes right after Loading the kiln, which is also quite a lot of work - so you’re already good and tired! We could not fire this immediately, we planned to wait about a week before we fired. Since the door was bricked up, and the chimney flue was closed, the pots were safe and sound.

Here’s a short video clip of me and Gary feeding the fire. Below that (at the very bottom of this post) is a fun compilation of firing pictures, it’s a great overview of the day.

Short video clip of Jill Spawn and Gary Price stoking Puff the Desert Dragon (the wood kiln) at the Desert Dragon Pottery. Video taken by Michelle (Mishy) Katz.

Compilation of some photos from the firing of our Spring 2023 wood firing at the Desert Dragon Pottery. Created by Anita and Steffi Howell.

I’ll share a bit more about the firing, and the finished pieces, in my next post.

Some of the photos in this post were taken by Anita and Steffi Howell, Mishy Katz and/or Gary Price.