the day time crew: rakhee, me, veena and ray.
we had so much fun. well according to adil we didnt keep the sanctity of the firing, as we were laughing ans singing and dancing around (ok, it was ME who was dancing around, but i am happy to hv been happy the whole day!) and i will forget adil's grouchy comment, he had fever and he has the right to be grouchy!
it was an intense day. the pyro stopped working . so when the night crew left (happily thinking they were on schedule) we were only about 600 degrees behind the schedule! ray fixed the pyro and also we used rakhee's pyrometre to measure the temp at the back of the cave kiln. looking back we did quite well, by six in the evening cone 10 was soft. cones are made of clay and they are put inside the kiln to measure the temperature inside the kiln. whatever the pyro might show it always a fifty or hundred degrees more inside the kiln. we hv different numbers for the cone, which stand for diff temperature. cone 10 is for 1300. the pyro was showing 1230 but the cone inside was responding to the fire. then the night team took over. it was 6.30 when we left the pottery.
other than the difficulty of catching up with the lost temp during the day , we got stuck at about 1160 for nearly two hours. ray tried all kinds of combination. thin wood, thick ones, solid huge logs of wood, opening the damper, closing it... but when later ray actually checked the cones inside we were much ahead compared to what showed outside. that was a relief. after that we mostly stoked huge logs of wood in the front in order to build up ash.
now as am writing this cone 10 must be down. and that means we achieved the desired temperature. now the night team will start stoking form the side holes as well as will maintain the temp in the beginning and will continue stoking big logs in the front to slowly build up the ash.
we reach there by 6 am tomo. and continue from there...
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