Loading kiln, finished. Kickstarter project.

I just finished the loading part of the kiln. The pictures show the second room I loaded. It is the room closest to the firebox. My concerns and experiments for this firing are as follows.

1) Can I minimize bubbling and cratering by keeping all edges of the bowls far back from the shelf line. That is to say, I made sure to keep all bowls well inside the kiln shelf so there are no edges hanging over the edge.

2) Refiring. I want to see if work I have fired before comes out ok on this refire.

3) I am shortening the chimney. I needed to rebuild the chimney so I am taking it as an opportunity to shorten it. I first had a short stack which I gradually lengthened. There was a noticeable change in the look of the work and I want to go back to the earlier look. It is much more difficult to fire the kiln with a short chimney but the work is more interesting.

I have close to 25o bowls in the room in the pictures. In both rooms I have about 475 all together. In the room in the pictures there are kohiki and black bowls. I will fire the first Saturday and Sunday in February. I still have to finish the chimney.

The other photos show some of the images I will use for my Kickstarter tiles project. I am using a working title of “History of these tiles”. The photos are labeled with one of the 10 categories I will have. In each category I will have 10 different photos. In all 10 categories * 10 photos = 100 different photos. I am hoping to launch February 15th.