Spring Sawdust Firing

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I built a quick sawdust kiln, this time adding some chicken wire between the levels to support the work to stop the sawdust getting too compressed.
Sawdust Kiln
Set it on fire and left it covered for a few hours for the smoke to do its thing.
Sawdust Firing
When all the sawdust had burnt away I was left with pile of fired pieces rady to reassemble.
Broken bits
Using some potters glue and some epoxy resin I rebuilt them.
Fracture Lines
Like this…
Rebuilt
I am quite pleased with the results 🙂
Broken forms

Spring Raku Firing

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After the sleet and snow of last weekend, it was great to see a bit of sunshine this Saturday and a chance to do some outdoors raku and sawdust firing.

With the help of a few friends we got the raku kiln going.
Pots ready to fire in the raku kiln

Raku Kiln

Getting the pots out – Photo by Martin

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bluebus/6970045245

Putting the pots into the sawdust – Photo by Martin

Smoke

Cleaning the Pots – Photo by Martin

Pot being cleaned

The Results

http://www.flickr.com/photos/phatcontroller/6972583139

Thanks to Marlene, Allan, Phill, Laura, Pete and Martin for their help.

Raku Firing Assistants

Firing Fail

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Puff of smoke

I attempted to sawdust fire some larger pieces the other day but sadly both cracked during the firing. Bah.

Cracked

I suspect that they both cracked due to the uneven heating in the sawdust, they got a bit too much air in the bottom and got very hot very quickly. Still, I am looking forward to some more experimenting.

New shapes