May Firing — ELIN HUGHES

As I run the gamut of seasons here in Illinois, the dogwoods, magnolias and eastern redbuds in the garden have shaken off the last of their blossoms. We’ve had some unexpected visitors to the studio, a starling that fell down the wood stove chimney and startled me one morning, as well as a couple of snakes coming out of their winter hiding. I’ve been having great fun using the Merlin Bird ID app to identify birds by their song. The bright red Cardinals and American Robins I see almost daily, but we’ve had a fair amount of migrating visitors, including a pair of brown headed cowbirds and an indigo bunting.

We had a couple of migrating potters visit too at the beginning of the month. Eva Funderburgh arrived in from Seattle, Washington following in the footsteps of a drove of adorable tiny mythical beasts she sent in the post. And all the way from Taiwan, where they are in the process of building an astonishing ceramics centre, Simon’s ex apprentice Meng-Che and his wife Apple. It was a delight to fire with this team, they were warm and generous company, as well as excellent chefs!

A dramatic firing in various ways, the day before we packed the kiln, as I was glazing work, I experienced my first tornado warning since living in Illinois. We sheltered in the basement for half an hour, with no sign of a twister. However, later in the evening a thunderstorm with torrential rain began flooding the studio and we had to build up barricades with gravel and sandbags to stop the deluge. The rain let up though for a drier first day of packing on May 8th.

Firing began as usual with the damper at 4” (Usually 3 or 4), stoking into the clean out at the back of the main bourry box. With her birthday closest to the firing, Eva had the privilege of lighting the kiln, as per tradition with Simon’s firings, using only one match. I’ve never found out what happens if someone is unsuccessful in lighting the kiln with one match, presumably they get sacrificed to the kiln gods instead.

At first we climbed gradually with the goal of 75F an hour to 500F, which took around six hours. Converting to celsius can be a little confusing at times but in UK terms this is about 42C/hour. After 500F/260C the climb rate sped up to 100F/55C. The pine lumber we get as offcuts from a local pallet factory can be awkwardly ‘goofy and confetti-esque’ (to steal the eloquent words of Lars Voltz), so as the firebox heated up, I was throwing handfuls into the main firebox stoke hole as well. As per last firing (which you can read about in more detail here), we transitioned fully over to the main stoke hole once the pyrometer reached 1000F/538C.

Action shot - stoking the firebox with Eva!

I wasn’t on shift for this transitional phase last time, so it was good to have the opportunity to navigate the switch this time around. During this change over I opened the damper and primary air to encourage the air to be drawn in to burn the wood downwards. The full transition to main stokes that fill the firebox can take a few hours as the kiln adjusts. Simon showed me how it helped to stoke 2x4 pieces directly into an open hole of the secondary air to increase the coal bed at this stage.

After 2000F/1100C the rate of climb slows a lot and it is equally a case of reading the pyrometer and watching the cones and flames to make adjustments. This, my second firing of the train kiln, was a tricky one. Last firing took 44 hours before we started the downfire. This time, at hour 49 with almost a third of the cone packs still no further than ^6, Simon decided to change tact. A combination of my too tight packing of the back stack, a large amount of tiles in the kiln, and a lack of large pieces overall meant that the flame was not moving through efficiently. Simon made the decision to clear the firebox stoke hole completely, close the primary air and fire the train like an anagama. This was a totally novel approach to me but worked wonders. Stoking small pieces of pine, the pyrometer temperature was brought back up, knocking down some cone 9s at the back.

Firing with Simon I’m learning some interesting tricks for controlling kilns. During the firing of the anagama in Syracuse last month, the front was getting much hotter than the back at the later stages. We closed the primary and secondary air and ran the kiln off one log in the front at a time, waiting for the flame from that stoke to reach the back pots, before adding just one more log. That way, when the temperature at the back dropped too low we began side-stoking, without the temperature at the front ever going up. It felt counterintuitive to how I expected to fire an anagama but worked to obtain an even heat distribution.

This firing no.18 of the train kiln resulted in some wonderful effects despite the uphill battle, a very ashy firing in all. As always it was sad to say goodbye to the firing team. We parted with full hearts, full bellies and suitability traumatized by Eurovision.

祝你成功