Loading an Electric Pottery Kiln

Video Transcript

"Now we're going to load the kiln. I've already put a few pots in the bottom here. If you look inside the kiln you can see. When loading a glaze kiln, it's important that nothing touches. Glaze is going to turn to glass in the firing, and if it's touching anything it's going to fuse to it, and when you take it out you're going to be very disappointed. In a bisque firing you can have everything touching. You can stack them all together to maximize your kiln load, and you can get as much in there as possible. You always want to leave at least an eighth of an inch in between pots in a glaze firing. But, you also want to maximize how many pots you're getting in there, so; as you can see, I put the larger pots in first, and then I'm going to fill in the room I have left with smaller pots, just so that I don't waste space in this expensive kiln firing. You also need to know that for each shelf that I showed you a moment ago, you need three points to hold each shelf up. you need to have at least a quarter of an inch clearance above your pots, before that shelf. Your pots are going to expand a little bit in the hottest part of the firing. So if you don't have enough clearance, you're going to do this, which is what I did in one of my first firings. I had a bowl that was short enough that it didn't touch the top, but when it expanded it reached up and it touched the top of the kiln. If you do that enough times in your kiln, you're going to ruin your furniture, or your kiln, or your pieces. So that's an important thing to learn. Once you've got your pieces in there, and you've got your stilts in place, you take your kiln shelf, and you hold it steady and level, and gently set it down on all three points evenly. Check it with your finger. If it wobbles just a little bit it's fine, because you're going to be putting more weight on top of it before you move to the next layer. If it wobbles a lot, you need to take it off and try again, and you just keep going until you've got the kiln loaded all the way to the top, and I'll show you how to program it."