(Photos will arrive soon.)
We fire all glazed work in propane Olympic updraft kilns. I (Michelle) can offer some procedural advice I guess, to fellow clay artists suffering with this challenging style of firing. Use the "contact us" page to ask questions. I have figured out how to get pretty reliable body reduction and glaze reduction. I can get wonderful shino results, (my favorite glaze) as well as a buttery cream, temmoku, kaki and a gorgeous celadon. I do use one blue. I also have a couple of greens that I fire intentionally in oxidation, for the obvious reason that I do not seek pink or beige-greens. I have two sizes of kiln, a 28" with four burners and a smaller (24"?) olympic with three burners that has a pilot bar. I do not like the pilot bar and would not choose to have one again. I fire to cone 8 in the bottom with the top reaching a good cone 10 pretty consistently on both kilns. I do a five or six hour glaze firing, using generally six pounds of propane. One of my goals is to figure out how to consistently get a good high-fire copper red in this kiln. If anyone can tell me how to do THAT, please contact me! Currently, I put in some red pieces in most firings; occasionally one or two will actually fire to a pretty uniform red! ~Michelle Spencer