Looking inside the kiln (for 5 hours kills my freaking back)

For the past month I've been making a ton of stuff to fire in time for Christmas shopping (I'm already behind). I did a bisque last week and busted my ass to get everything glazed so that I could fire yesterday and work tonight to get stuff ready to go into the stores and on my site. I stayed up until 3am glazing Friday and Saturday and I still didn't finish everything but I had enough to fill my kiln. Here is what the bottom of my kiln looked like before firing:

Shot glasses, cork pots and the first of 4 sun sculptures to survive a bisque fire!

The color of these pieces will look 100% different after they are fired, of course. I will post an after picture eventually.

When loading the kiln for a glaze firing, there are several things that need to be considered:
•  Pieces cannot be touching each other or the kiln floor/shelves - the glaze will melt and they will stick together. (Unlike a bisque where you can stack pieces and they will fire fine.)
•  If there is glaze on the bottom of a piece it must be dry footed
•  All beads and ornaments must be wired and hung separately
•  Space must be used wisely, like-sized pieces should be placed on the same shelves in order to maximize the firing.
There's other stuff, but that's really all that I had to worry about for this one,

It takes quite a bit of time to wire hang beads, but it is the best firing technique I have found. As you can see in this picture of my second shelf, I hang the beads on small metal posts. I also have pendants and color sample blocks on this shelf.

You will notice the 4 tall posts on the left and right of the picture and the "kiln sit" on the left kiln wall between the two posts. I will be talking about that in a minute so keep it in the back of your mind.

My ornaments are long pieces of clay that have been twisted to resemble an abstract icicle. I could lay them down and dry foot them but that would leave a few sharp spots on their exterior that I would have to sand off and they would be pretty noticeable. So I had to find a way to hang them...

I found the rack of a small grill and it fit inside the kiln perfectly. I was able to hang almost all of the ornaments that I made from it and I carefully balanced the rack on the 4 posts. Loading a kiln is all about BALANCING SHIT and because this firing contained so many things that needed to be precisely placed, it took me FIVE HOURS to load my kiln. (Trip to Home Depot to buy more wire not included).

There is a difference between the placement of the pieces on the shelf in the last two pictures, the stuff below the ornaments had to be moved around because a few of the ornaments hung too low and touched them. When removing the ornaments to move things around, one of the posts fell over - knocking a pendant down to the kiln floor. Not cool. I tried taking some wire to fish it out but in the process I knocked a shot glass off its dry foot. I had to remove the second shelf to get the pendant out and reset the shot glass. This happened like 5 times.

Remember when I said to notice the kiln sit on the left side of that picture? Here is another shot of it from the outside of the kiln.

You have to lift a latch and push down a thing that holds it, this moves one of the three prongs inside the kiln up so you can put your cone in between them. When the cone "matures" after a combination of the correct amount of firing time/heat, it will bend down between the two prongs below it. The prong on top will go down with it, shutting off the kiln. Or if when you're JUST ABOUT done loading, you accidentally bump the stupid piece of shit thing on the outside and knock the cone all the way to the bottom of the kiln - you then have to take everything back out so you can reset the cone and reload the kiln. I did this a few times as well. Most frustrating kiln loading experience EVER! I was actually in tears once when I dropped something down to the floor of the kiln because my back was starting to kill me from bending over it for so long and I was getting really sick of taking everything out and putting it back in. I almost gave up but I really wanted to fire yesterday because I was going to donate some ornaments to a United Way silent auction we're having at work that starts today.

When I finally had this f-ing thing ready to go I about did a damn cartwheel. I turned it on low for two hours, bumped it up to medium for an hour and when I checked it after that it was already shut off. No way does it only take 3 hours to fire cone 05, unless it's a high fire which I never do.

You're not supposed to open the kiln until it has cooled because you could wreck what is in it by changing the temperature inside the kiln so abruptly. I however, couldn't resist. I carefully opened the kiln with a hot pad to see what the hell was going on and I wish I would have taken a picture to show you what had happened... The metal rack holding the ornaments warped - a lot - making all of the ornaments shift and tip over to touch each other and the stuff below them. THANKFULLY one of the ornaments also knocked the cone out of the kiln sit, turning the kiln off before it got hot enough to melt the glaze and ultimately wreck everything I've been working on for the last month.

I still need to come up with a high temp metal solution to hang ornaments from... but at least I have the option of re-firing and saving everything. Needless to say I'm glad for that but holy hell is this ever frustrating. Hopefully I will be posting finished product pictures in the next couple of days and be telling you all about the ingenious solution I came up with to fire the ornaments successfully. Until then, please cross your fingers.