One morning, a week before Christmas, found Dave Dobie, Ted Driediger and me, and later Jake Stelpstra, loading the salt kiln out at Herman Venema’s country studio near Abbotsford. As Herman had no pots ready for this firing I invited Eliza Wang to participate. She had some pots that could use a little more melting in a salty environment and three of her potpourri pots which had only been bisque fired. These she sprayed with slips so we were careful to handle them as little as possible. Jake, a retired teacher who has been a student of Herman’s and now teaches some classes there, was having his first salt experience!
While Dave carefully loaded all our work in the spots that only he knows will suit our preferences (I’m known for wanting lots of salt, Eliza needed less, Ted has work which can benefit from various locations and Dave likes less salt so his work goes in at the front) I busied myself applying wads to Dave’s and some of Ted’s work. Mine and Eliza’s were done at home, with glue holding the wads in place.
By mid-afternoon I left the others to load the front shelves and close the door (no bricking up on this kiln). Dave lives nearby so is able to pop over to turn the kiln on and up late at night and early in the morning. He is a saint! Hooray for gas burners! I’m not interested in spending days chopping wood and stoking a fire box. I prefer the cleaner look of gas firing.
The next morning when I returned to Sumas Prairie the firing was well under way. The cone sixes were over. We chatted while we waited for cone nines to bend and then salted every twenty minutes until 14 lbs had been inserted. We followed the pattern we’d used last February when I was surprised to find that 14 lbs was enough. It would seem that allowing the salt to circulate around the kiln for ten minutes and then opening the damper a little and clearing the atmosphere for another ten minutes encourages more glass to form. We removed a few draw-rings and I agreed that we’d used enough salt.
There was some anxiety about how the smoke/vapour/fog was hanging over the fields and the Venema farmhouse after each salting. It all depends on the wind direction, as we hadn’t had a problem previously. We’ll need to consider the wind or the time of day next time we fire.
After a short period of clearing the atmosphere we turned off the kiln. Two days later, on the Saturday we found that, yes indeed, there was more than enough salt used, and I was very happy with our results.
Photos of results in the next blog.
