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Controlled Reduced Cooling 5 |
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After convincing
ourselves that
the cooling regime could improve our results overall, without doing too much harm to the better pots coming
out of the anagama, we tried applying it. Fortunately we had a
plentiful supply of the decorative ginger growing in our
garden,
because we needed a lot. The damper of our kiln did not properly seal
the kiln, and even blocking off the top of the chimney still
allowed a lot of leaks, so it was hard to keep the kiln in reduction
between 1100 and 900 on the way down. About 30 cubic feet of ginger was
stuffed into the firebox, and in the end we took to opening the stoking
door and heaving in bundles of the stuff, just to keep the oxy probe
reading heavy reduction.
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on the way down, we stopped stuffing, and waited until
the probe started to indicate oxidation. Then we tottered
off to bed in or usual state of post-anagama exhaustion,
confident that cooling would be slow enough to conform to the proposed
cooling plan. The next morning I cautiously peeped into the firebox and
was appalled
to see all the pots covered with black carbon. Two thirds of the pots
in the kiln were Carol's, and to return to the house to wake her with
the
news that all the pots were ruined risked grave domestic repercussions.
A period of desperate thought turned up the possibility that
when
the oxy probe registered oxidation at 900 there was still a great mass
of unburnt ginger in the firebox, not yet burning but willing to do so
after a period of drying out. If this finally burnt it would have done
so under extreme reduction, possibly at temperatures below
which
carbon burns off, thus yielding carbon covered pots. So I was able to
wake Carol and nonchalently announce that there had been a slight
change of
plan and that we were going up to top temperature again in order to
repeat the controlled cooling cycle. Although Carol found this
difficult to believe she was too tired to resist, and after overcoming
the incredulity of our two visiting stokers we did
as proposed. The second
time we made sure all the ginger had burnt away before closing up. The
results were encouraging enough to cause us to use the controlled
cooling in subsequent firings. |
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| Above is a graph of the cooling cycle as applied to our anagama. The kiln has relatively thin walls, fibre lid sections, and no buttressing and so did not hold much heat. While this meant that the period of ginger stuffing was relatively short (or would have been, had we not done it twice) it also meant that the cooling between 900 and 800 took less than the planned 4 hours. The firing of the kiln prior to starting cooling is not the topic of this article, but the general aim was lots of reduction. We did not use Final Stage Reduction, and have not used it since then. In later firings we took more notice of the period between 900 and 800 and if necessary introduced a gas burner to slow this part of the cooling while maintaining oxidation. Sometimes, depending on state of the coal bed at the start of cooling, the cooling is slow enough not to need the gas burner. |
 SideStoke home Article pages 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
Use of the gas
burner is
convenient but but repugnant to dedicated wood firers so we are
adopting the more sensible procedure of
increasing the thermal mass of the kiln. In the image at left
my
nephew Andrew Rosser, who regularly helps with the stoking, is making a
start by adding more bricks to the base of the sides of the
kiln. We have not yet added enough to be certain that the gas
burner will not be needed.
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