Ceramic Wood Firing Process

The process of firing turns clay into ceramics and your raw work of art into a finished masterpiece.

Ceramic wood firing process.

The coals in your ash pit serve to provide some heat to the kiln and to gasify the freshly stoked wood mostly through radiant heat energy. When loading the wood kiln be sure to use wadding to prevent pots from sticking to shelves. Wood firing is an art the kiln is manned around the clock usually in shifts and some kilns are fired for five days or more. While early kilns consisted of a bonfire over a hole in the ground technology has vastly improved to create sophisticated ceramic kilns.

Wood begins to gasify at about 500 f. As well as firing clay the glaze must also be fired to maturity. Due to the enormous amount of work involved anagama kilns are usually fired only a few times a year. It is important to match the firing temperature of the glaze to the maturing temperature for the particular clay body.

The consumption of fuel is also minimal less than half a cord of wood. How a ceramic piece is fired has a huge impact on the look of the finished result. It is really magical to unload the kiln and see what has happened this time. Potters need to know the processes taking place in order to be able to control the outcome.

It can be loaded in two to three hours fires evenly to cone 10 12 in eight hours tops or if you choose you can fire two to three days depending on how much ash buildup you like. And if you are one of those potters you probably can t get enough of the wood kiln firing process. This happens for the most part after the materials that form the gasses have been driven out of the wood. The completed ceramic piece must be slowly fired to the proper maturing temperature of the clay.

Then the glaze firing brings the clay and applied glazes to maturity. The ceramic scholar philip rawson gave the keynote address at the iowa wood firing conference in 1991 and compared contemporary wood firing to a 19th century cult in which artists who were appalled by social and cultural ostentation wandered around pulling grotesque faces in mockery of the pretension around them. Bisque firing refers to the first time newly shaped clay pots or greenware go through high temperature. The firing process is fairly violent and sometimes the work is broken or cracked.

Some artists only fire once a year. Most wood fired kilns are built on site and are quite expensive. The firing process for making ceramics bisque firing. Are contemporary wood firing potters those same people wandering around.

Wood for thousands of years was the main source of fuel for firing ceramics. The first firing the bisque is to approximately 1000 c. Ceramics must be fired to make them durable. The second is the burning of the charcoal.

Generally each piece is fired twice. When a kiln reaches about 660 degrees fahrenheit the chemically bonded water. The type of kiln used and the firing schedule will also have an effect on the color and texture of the glaze. For many potters wood is more than just a source of heat for a kiln it is a process even a way of life.