Spring 2023 Firing of Puff the Desert Dragon Part 2

This is part 2 of my blog post about the spring wood firing. If you missed part one, you can check it out here: Spring 2023 Wood Firing Part 1.

I discussed loading the kiln and bricking up the door in my last post. This post will cover the actual firing, and a bit of the unloading.

Warming up

We’ve started small with little fires built beneath the grate, so the kiln can warm slowly over the first 90 minutes or so. You can see 3 of our cone packs in this picture, and there’s 1 more at the top. Remember from my last post - as they melt, the cones help us to measure the heat in the kiln. These are positioned in different places that will be visible when we’re firing.
In case you’re interested, here is a link to the Wikipedia entry about pyrometric cones.

Feeding the fire

This is a great shot showing how we stoke the fire. We use a half piece of kiln shelf to create the covering, and that is carefully laid down on the metal table (using an old raku glove as an extra heating pad). We throw the wood in pretty quickly, and then carefully put the covering back into place.

Melting cones

This is such a great shot of a cone pack, and the kiln is Hot!! The cone 010 cone is long melted away here, and you can see the next cone (a cone 7 I believe) is bent about halfway down. So we’re around 2270 F at this point. It’s good and hot, but it’ll take more time and wood to climb up those last steps to cones 10, 11, and 12.
In this firing we learned that once the kiln is good and hot (right around this point) it’s best to start doing small, quick stokes to get temperature up into the 2400 F range that we’re after.

Wrapping up

I believe at this point we’ve hit cone 10 and we’re giving it another hour to try and get up in the cone 11/12 range.
Once we decided to finish up, we gave the kiln maybe 10 minutes or so to burn up the last stoke. Then we closed up the flue, and plugged up all the grate holes along the bottom of the door. We mudded up the many cracks we could see in the door as well, so the kiln could cool down nice and slow.

Here’s a short video showing the kiln as it’s firing. This was taken right around cone 9/10 - just a bit before the previous picture.

Video shows the firing wood kiln, right around cone 9.

Once the firing was done, more waiting….ugh! It’s so hard to wait to see the results of all this work! I believe we gave the kiln a good 4 days to cool before we unloaded.

First, here’s some group shots of many of my pieces, posed and shot right after we unloaded the kiln. You can see the cone packs in these shots as well, remember the cone in back is cone 12. Beneath those pics, you’ll find a selection of some of my favorite pieces from this firing. I’ll link a few more videos by Anita, Steffi and Mishy at the bottom of this post.

The Desert Dragon Spring 2023 Wood Fire Crew

From right: Gary Price, Mishy Katz, Jill Spawn and Anita Howell. Thanks to Ed Joseph for this great pic!

Some favorite neutral pots, fresh from the kiln.

Some favorites of my Rods Bod with Emily Purple pots - I love the deep brown of the bare Rods Bod clay!

Some favories in Bmix clay - with more Emily Purple! I love the contrast to the bare wood fired clay.

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Compilation of photos of Unloading of the 2023 wood firing of Puff the Desert Dragon at the Desert Dragon Pottery Studio.

Video of the Desert Dragon Pottery crew unloading the Spring 2023 wood firing.

That’s a wrap for the Spring firing! We were so happy with the results, and we’re starting to think about a Fall or Winter firing - I have a few pieces squirreled away already!

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