Friday 22 June 2012

Our first kiln firing



Well we finally managed to fire the kiln after waiting for a suitable sunny day, this was no easy thing with the poor weather we have been having this summer. Here are some photos of the work just after opening the kiln the next morning once it had cooled off. The models are my wife's work and the bowls and cups are mainly mine.
Pieces waiting to be removed from the kiln after firing
Pieces safely removed and ready for decoration / glazing

The day we chose turned out not to be quite as sunny as forecast! - well it is England in the summer so we shouldn't have expected unbroken sunshine :-) Despite this we only used about 50p of electricity whilst the kiln was being fired and some of this was down to boiling the kettle and running other household appliances so the actual cost of running the kiln was a bit less than 50p which was pleasing.

We have since done another couple of bisque firings with similar results, we are still waiting for the elusive sunny days of summer when we might fire the kiln for almost nothing!

The next firing will be a stoneware glaze firing which requires a higher temperature to be reached, 1240C rather than 950C. This will use more electricity as the kiln will need to run at full power for at least a couple of hours to reach 1240C and then this temperature needs to be held for a 20 minute "soak" to allow the glaze to melt evenly. I will report back on how this went, we are excited to see the first finished pieces that we made in our own kiln.