I recently slapped together a small test soda kiln I dubbed “The Suburban Soda Kiln”. I built it on the back side of the stack of the wood kiln.
(in a moment of rare fore thought on my part, I left some removeable bricks in the back of the chimney, these are now outlet flues for the suburban soda kiln, thus I can use the same stack for both the wood kiln and the suburban by plugging is unplugging the inlet flues.)
As I write I am soaking my third load in the ’suburban’. The first you’ve already seen a few results for (ooey googey goodness, etc). It’s a cross draft (think mini train kiln) fired with two MR100 burners fed with propane. Excellent directional flashing (especially compared to the drowndraft wood), and doesn’t require much soda at all using the gail nichols/emily murphy/burritos chalupa method, about 3 and 1/2 burritos is more than enough, way more.
Yesterday I unloaded my second load, and for the first time I have PLATES with directional flashing, I am pretty stoked, cause I never liked my plates. Fore the second firing I used less soda than the first and taking advantage of the gobs of rain we’ve been getting I took it in my head to try out some post firing reduction (keeping the kiln in reduction while cooling) using the soaked brick method Nichols mentions in her book.
Well… you ever had one of those loads where you tried too many new things and ended up with something way to confusing to see what’s going on? Well that’s what I got. I had new flashing slips, new original drawings and scraffito and stencils and post reduction and now I need to figure out what it was that did what I liked and what it was that did what I didn’t like and narrow it down from there. I suppose that’s the benefit of a small test kiln, quick turn around, you don’t ruin too many pots (I like putting test slips/glazes on real pots and mug, instead of test tiles. If they work, they will sell, if they didn’t they will sell at a huge discount). The Suburban holds about 30 mug sized pots in a single load. Below are some of the pots from the second firing… Post firing reductionslipscraffitoism…
Large Mug, white stoneware (Loafer’s Glory)
Stencils with flashing slips,
then scrafitto drawing with cobalt slip laid in,
soda fired cone 10
reduction cooled from 2300-1890 using water soaked bricks.
Detail of above mug
Kinda cool frosty crystals from reduction cool?
Blue is from scraffito that got wacked with soda.
Large Mug, stoneware (Pheonix)
Stencils with flashing slips,
then scrafitto drawing with iron slip laid in,
soda fired cone 10
reduction cooled from 2300-1890 using water soaked bricks.
Back side(s) detail(s) of above mug
Small Mug, stoneware (Pheonix)
Stencils with flashing slips,
then scrafitto drawing with iron slip laid in,
soda fired cone 10
reduction cooled from 2300-1890 using water soaked bricks.
backside of above mug (soda side)
Small Square Mug, stoneware (Pheonix)
Stencils with Shino Slip, rest is bare clay
soda fired cone 10
reduction cooled from 2300-1890 using water soaked bricks.
Probably my favorite mostly because it’s easier on the eyes than the others. Although the more I look the more I like the others, but it takes time. Maybe those end up being the best pots anyways, always something new you notice.
Grouping of a select few…
