Ann Geiger on thu 11 apr 02
There has been some discussion about pitfiring, charcoal as fuel and small
wood kilns on the list recently which I have been following with great
interest. I found the following message in the archives and thought others
would also find it interesting. There does not seem to be an identity of
the original writer that I can figure out. I have left the List info at the
top of the message for those it has meaning. I have deleted the last
paragraph of the message which poses questions which are very interesting
but do not give factual information.
Thank you
Annie Geiger
Tue, 7 Sep 1999 17:34:01 EDTReply-To: Ceramic Arts Discussion List
Sender: Ceramic Arts Discussion List
From:
http://lsv.ceramics.org/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind9909&L=CLAYART&D=0&P=117041Subj
ect: Japanese raku kilnContent-Type: text/plain;
charset=US-ASCIIContent-Type: TEXT/PLAIN;
charset=US-ASCII----------------------------Original
message----------------------------------------------I have been playing
around with very, very basic firing methods, using charcoalinstead of wood,
and have had some very good results. The pots are made ofheavily-grogged
earthenware, decorated with incisions and burnished and firedraw (but
bone-dry) in a bed of charcoal.I built the kiln from house bricks, one cubic
metre (we are metric in SouthAfrica, so that's 3 foot x 3 foot x 3 foot,
near enough I guess), loosely piledup, no mortar, lots of gaps, especially
on the bottom (the base is a doublelayer of bricks). Looks like a short
stubby square chimney.I make a small fire in the bottom of the kiln to get
some red-hot coals, putsome in each pot to heat them while they stand to one
side, then pour in a bagor two of charcoal over the fire, and carefully (but
quickly, before thefire really gets going) place the pots around on the bed
of charcoal. Now I poura couple more bags over the pots and cover the kiln
with a sheet of corrugatediron. It will smoke for a while, but when the fire
gets going, it gets WHITEhot. I use real charcoal - not those pellets of
compressed coal-dust andflour.If all goes well, the pots are a beautiful
deep orange, with flashes ofblack. If it goes less well, they are a boring
beige - most likely a question ofhow much reduction is happening around the
pot. Losses are rare, because of thepre-heating (I did have a problem with
flaking off the exterior, but I hadburnished these pots after painting slip
over them, so I stopped).
Now I want to move on to low-fire glazes fired in a Japanese
charcoal-firedkiln, having seen the diagrams in Leach's Potters Book, and
also in StevenBranfman's Raku book.
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