Take Two, Week Ten

Hello Everyone,

After about 40 hours of firing the wood kiln, we have all nearly recovered. It was not the smoothest firing. It seems the kiln decided not to cooperate but we won't know for sure until we unload it on Wednesday. The beginning of the week found Phil and me wrapping up loose ends as we finished packing the kiln. The weather was decent so we were hopeful it would remain that way for the firing. The kiln is outdoors with a semi open shed. Margite and Thomas came on Wednesday evening. They are both very lovely people. She is finishing up a pottery course in Denmark but plans to set up a pottery in Estonia after graduation. Margite was Phil's apprentice about a year ago. She is busy planning her final show at college. She broke her hand over Christmas break so that set her behind a bit. It is better now but she has a lot to catch up on.
Phil lit a fire on Thursday to warm up the kiln. It burned all day and on Friday the inside temperature was about 200 C. On Thursday Lynne and I spent most of the day in the kitchen. We had invited a few people over to dinner that night. We made appetizers like pesto and tapenade, pizzas with everything from scratch, a few different salads, bread and some pies (apple and strawberry rhubarb). We had enough food left over to eat the next day while we were firing. Joining us for dinner was Lynne and Phil's friend Pauline (who used to be on the planning board for the Aberystwyth Ceramics Festival with Phil) , Jason, Julianne and their friend Katrina whom we had met when we helped Jason fire his kiln. We had a great time, ate too much and felt good and ready for the firing. I'm sure Margite enjoyed seeing everyone as she had spent time with all of them while she was living with the Rogers'.
Phil officially lit the kiln again about 6:30 am on Friday. The kiln has three chambers, the firebox, the main chamber and the salt chamber. We started by stoking the firebox. Ideally in a wood kiln, long flames pull through the whole kiln creating nice flashing marks on the pots. Unfortunately, the wretched weather returned for us on Friday and Saturday. There was 50 mph gales and horizontal rain and hail. Since the kiln shed has a metal corrugated roof, the sound of the hail being blown against it at such a strong speed was defening! We put wood into the firebox for most of Friday into the early morning. We took turns stoking. Each side of the firebox has a stoke hole with a hinged door on it. One person opens the door while the other person throws the wood in. There is a pyrometer which is a temperature gauge that has a probe inside the kiln. A digital readout tells you what temperature the kiln is at. I am used to fahrenheit so the celcius reading was a little wierd for me. Basically, we watched the pyrometer to make sure the temperature was rising. When it started to fall, we put in more wood. You have to get into a rhythm, otherwise the temperature may stall and not rise as much as you want. You have to be careful not to make it rise too quickly. All throughout a firing, there are chemical and physical changes happening within the kiln. If you fire it faster than the clay and glazes want, you risk interfering with the natural progression of those transformations. In short, it can make the pots look pretty dreadful.
On Friday Phil's friend Guy came to help. Guy made all the metal bracing and doors on the kiln. He met Phil when he went on one of Phil's summer pottery workshops. Guy is great with wood and metal and helped with a few projects when the kitchen was being renovated. Tomas had never fired a kiln before but he really got the hang of it. He seems to have a very mathematical brain (something most potters don't!) He was figuring out how many degrees would rise and fall before we needed to stoke. He and Margite made a great team. We took turns going in to eat. Trays of tea and coffee were brought out every so often to re-energize us. I told Phil that wood kilns actually require two types of fuel- lots of wood to keep the temperature going and lots of caffeine to keep the potters going!
I went to catch a few hours of sleep around midnight on Friday. When I came back several hours later the kiln had only risen about twenty degrees- not good! There was this one brick in the first chamber and several on the firebox that Phil would take out when he wanted the temperature to rise. Doing this creates a damper that sucks the heat through faster. The only trouble is, Phil was worried there was too much air going into the kiln. To make his glazes work, Phil needs the atmosphere to be reducing (meaning there is more fuel than air. The fuel doesn't compust as fast and it creates a lot of carbon). If too much air goes in, the atmosphere will oxidise and the pots will turn out all light colored, not at all what Phil wants. So, he opted to keep the bricks in for a while to insure reduction, thus the temperature stalled. Eventually it did start to rise very slowly and we also started stoking the main chamber.
Around 5 am it looked like we might actually have a nice day. The sky was blue and the wind died down. However, it was just tempting us and soon turned stormy again. It was actually worse on Saturday than it was on Friday. After a while, I did not even notice if it was raining or blowing. The kiln was nice and toasty and I could stand near it and be very warm. Jason, Julianne and Katrina came back on Saturday to help us. Guy also came back. We stopped stoking the firebox and only worked on the last two chambers; Margite and Tomas on the main, Phil and me on the salt. It was a real struggle to keep the temperature climbing and keep the right atmosphere inside the kiln. Phil said it had never acted like that before. His theory is that something was wrong inside the kiln that we could not see. Between the firebox and main chamber is a bag wall, a half wall of brick used to direct the flames upward. There are some holes in it to keep the flame pulling through. Phil blocked up a few holes to try and make it heat a spot that was always cool. He reckons that he blocked up too many and therefore, the heat was not getting through efficiently. Once the kiln starts there is not much you can do to change the inside so you just have to go with it and hope it works. The weather was not helping either. The wind was blowing right down the chimney putting cold air in and also drawing hot air out too fast. Phil said to Jason, "I don't know why we put ourselves through this, its such a bloody pahlavah" (meaning such an awful fuss). It certainly was a pahlavah! Oh dear, oh dear.
The lambs were not liking the weather either. Phil found another dead one that had gotten too wet. The farmer came and took a few away that were very small. I was walking by a window in the house and I saw a lamb lying down in a funny way and there was a crow near it. The crows always go after them if they are wounded or dead. I yelled to Lynne and she jumped over the fence and ran towards the little guy. I put on my wellies and went too. When she picked it up I thought it was dead because its head was tilted back. He was alive though not in the best condidtion. He was having some kind of fit with his eyes rolled back and a little foam coming out of his mouth. He was a pretty big one so it seemed strange that the cold should bother him like that; its usually the newborns that can't cope. We brought him inside and wrapped him in a towel. I sat with him near the heater and rubbed him to warm him up. The reason why his head was tilted back was because he could not breathe. His nose sounded blocked up and he could not open his mouth. No matter what we tried he could not breathe right. Once he warmed up he seemed better but he was in such a state, it did not seem hopeful. He was really struggling, kicking his feet and such because he could not catch a breath. It was so frustrating not being able to do anything. Fortunately, the farmer came to do his rounds and we flagged him down. He said a few other lambs had the same thing and although he took them to the vets they could not diagnose what it was. The farmer took him home, put him under a warming lamp and gave him some medicine. We found out the next day that he made it through the night but died in the morning. The farmer thought it was probably pneumonia brought on by the weather conditions. Lynne said, at least we saved him from the crows and made him comfortable. It was still very sad.
Soon after the lamb incident, Jason and his crew went home. By this point we were mostly just stoking the salt chamber and getting it up to temperature. Phil puts the salt in when the kiln is at its hottest. You can't even believe how much wood we used! That huge pile Lynne and I stacked was used by early Saturday and we had moved onto a secondary pile. Sometimes we were stoking as often as every 4 or 5 minutes so it goes pretty quick. The kiln was so hot inside the wood would combust as soon as it entered the stoke hole. By about 8 pm it was time to put salt in. Phil uses between 8 and 10 pounds of salt. Margite measured it out and packed it up in brown paper baggies. Phil would either toss them in or put two at a time on a board and drop the board in. He did this over 1 1/2 hours. The salt gets so hot it turns into a vapor and covers the pots in a glaze. It was interesting for me as I had never seen it done before. Unlike the rest of the firing this part went really well. Phil has not been at all happy with past results from the salt chamber but this time he said he felt the most in control he's ever been. At least one part of the firing went that way! By the end of it we were all so tired and a bit loopy. As Lynne would say, we were all going a bit doolally. Around 9:15 pm, 39 hours after starting, we stopped stoking, pushed in the dampers and placed all the bricks back in. It was finished!!! When we got inside Lynne had made us some food but we were all so tired we weren't that hungry. I told Phil I was SO EXCITED to unpack the kiln. He said we can take a peek on Monday but won't unload until Wednesday. He said, "Kari, it might look terrible so curb your enthusiasm". I'm still looking forward too it although I am trying to curb by enthusiasm.
On Sunday, we slept in. We had to move the clocks ahead so that meant we lost another hour of sleep. I made a big celebratory batch of blueberry oatmeal pancakes. We went up to Guy's house because he built a big pond last year that Phil wanted to show us. Of course, the weather was beautiful and warm. Guy and his wife Anne have really done a lot with their garden. They have planted all kinds of flowers and made stone walkways. It is all tiered as they live on the top of a hill. Guy dug a huge pond at the base of the hill that he hopes to put fish in. They have planted some water plants that will look nice once they've grown and filled in. All around their house is a very old forest with mossy, twisted trees. It was a lovey place although it was a bit windy up on the hill.
We had to get home because the groomer was coming for Libby and Tess. They have very thick coats and with all the mud and water their fur was getting quite matted in places. For most dogs gettin groomed is no big deal. For Libby it is a thoroughly traumatic experience. Phil and Lynne warned me that she hates it and will hide under the kitchen table for days after. The table is her security blanket.
Sure enough, Christine came with her folding table and tools. Phil managed to get Libby on it but once she got her footing she wrestled away and jumped off. No joke, it took three of us to hold her while Christine brushed and trimmed her. The whole time Libby was shaking and licking her lips a lot. We were all patting her and whispering to her to help her calm down. She tried a few more times to escape and nearly managed to once. It is strange because they've had her since she was a pup and she was never abused. Libby is just a bit of a drama queen with a streak of being neurotic. She had so much undercoat it took over an hour and a half to finsh. Mind you, when it was all over she looked much better. She will surely feel better too as she will not be so hot all the time. She got off the table, gave herself a mighty shake and made a beeline straight for the kitchen. Tess was next and she was no trouble at all. I don't think she liked it much, but it was nothing compared with her sister. They both looked very smart when they were done. You've never seen so much fur! Phil says we could have made a whole other dog from it. Oh the joys of dog ownership. As Lynne predicted, Libby is still giving me grudging looks as if to say, "I thought you were my friend". She will not sit near me or get on the couch with me. She probably thinks I will go after her with a brush and clippers.
This Friday I am going away for two weeks. There is a potter in Devon named Nic Collins who is also a wood firer. I may get to help him fire his wood kiln. Nic and his wife Sebina live pretty simply out in the countryside. I will be staying in a yurt which is like a big tent made from canvas and a wood frame. It should be quite an experience.Because of this I will be unable to send my updates. I will try to send one before I go to let you all know how the firing went. I took a lot of short videos of the firing because it is hard to time the picture right to catch the action since my camera has a bit of a delay on it. I hope you enjoy the photos. Until next time...

Take care,
Kari