Feeding the inferno, and other things I couldn't do without Matt

<-- Just a pizza, but more like how I imagined the firing might go. We survived the wood firing, which I hope by the end of the post you'll appreciate as a righteous achievement. I went to the laurel highlands to participate in firing this kiln as the culminating event in my Wood-Fired Ceramics class (a generous birthday gift from Mom and Dad!). My teacher Joe, had described the process as 'you know, the kiln has to be loaded, and there is a lot of smoke and ash that transforms into glaze and it takes a long time and then later we can unload it. Oh, we can camp and there is pizza oven.' This description somehow failed to convey the sheer amount of labor, heat and vertical shooting FLAMES that would be involved. Really, I should have put that together on my own- Normal glazes melt at just under 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, and to deposit enough ash that could be transformed into a glass that would melt evenly on the surfaces, that has to get to 2,300 degrees. And sit there for hours.

The whole process is transformative. A dusty shed at the edge of retreat center is filled with shelves, pots and wood, sealed shut and becomes a kiln. The pots turns from earthware to ceramics, the logs turn to ash which becomes a colored glass. For myself, I rebuilt my definitions of 'uncomfortably hot,' 'dangerously hot,' and 'hot as summer in hell.' But with Matt there and my classmates/coworkers to cheer me on, I suited up and conquered the flames. We won't see the pay off for all this hard work until next weekend

I was nervous going in to my first shift- the kiln had been cooking for a full day, and I was handed the gloves at 8pm Saturday night with the temperature at ~1,600 degrees. Joe hoped it would get to 2,000 by lunch, and Matt and I had the reins until 4am. I'd been watching my coworkers, so I knew what to do and had safety gear to do it in, but pulling the lid off a blazing inferno brings out a really instinctual response (RUN AWAY) that seemed impossible to overcome. Within the first hour though, I was doing it all. Opening the door to reveal the blaze, counting the cones of glass that would melt as the temperature increased, piling in wood until flames poured out the chimney, the pressure holes in the ceiling and finally the door itself until I slammed the inadequate-seeming pillow of fiberglass back over the hole. In this blazing atmosphere, you can smell the oxygen burning out of the iron, a smell that accompanies thick black clouds of burnt metal. Matt and I took turns feeding the fire and passing the wood, and Matt killed time by splitting logs and raking coals. As scared as I was to be in charge of this monster until 4am, I was so much more brave to have Matt there with me, whose welding experience gave him an edge at things like battering a coal bed flat with an iron rod, and raking coals until the iron rod turned red hot (eta:30 sec). With his support in tending, we got the fire to 1900 degrees by 4am. We saluted the next shift by shooting flames out the chimney and slept a few hours.

We took over again with more help the next day at noon. The temp was up to 2050, and we wanted it to get just a bit hotter and stay there over the day. We worked the first until about 6, and then left the kiln in the careful hands of Joe to tend for another day or so. When it is done, he'll seal up all the intake, choking out the flame and giving the pots a chance to cool slowly. We'll be back next weekend to unseal the door (we closed gaps with raw clay, which was baked into submission over the weekend) and unload the kiln. I can't imagine what we'll see- pots fused together by overzealous ashing, pots shattered by inarticulate wood tossing? we nearly destroyed the door on several occasions by shifting bricks out of place so severely they had to be banged back with a mallet-, but I hope some things come out well. Just as Joe described though, we made a lot of pizza, the camping was quite glamorous and it was a lot of fun. Fabulous! More pictures, here!