Autumn had arrived and it was time to travel up to Scotland to fire the woodfired kiln. This was our 14th firing and we were confident that all would go well as we now considered ourselves relatively experienced wood firers. The weather was fare and not too chilly. We spent a day and half glazing and loading the kiln. I persuaded Nigel to renumber the kiln door bricks this time with Arabic numbers rather than Roman! We also made some modifications to some of the bricks. Nigel was up earlier the next morning to start the firing and I joined him around 6am. The firing went well with a steady temperature rise if a little behind previous firings. By midday we reach 010 and commenced an hour of heavy reduction. After that we maintained some reduction as the temperature climbed. It is always a mistake to be over confident about wood firing. As time went on it become increasingly difficult to sustain a good temperature rise. We tried all the tricks we had learnt over the years. But at about 1200C the kiln stalled. After a bit of deliberation we deployed our secret weapon “the fire door”. This involves filling the fire box door with lengths of wood and then gradually pushing them into the fire box and then repeating this. This did the trick and the temperature began to rise steadily and we reach cone 10 without too much trouble. We even go up to a pyrometer reading of 1300C at one stage and cone 11. After an hour at top temperature we called it a day after an 18 hour firing. One of our longest as a two man team. After two and a half days cooling we opened the kiln and were pretty happy with the results. Some nice melts of the ash glazes. Indeed a bit too much as several pots got stuck to the kiln shelves! I had some nice bottles to take down to Penrith for a pot sale at Potfest.
David Mason Pottery 
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