Electric Pottery Kiln Glaze Firing

Video Transcript

"So now we've got the kiln completely loaded and we're ready to fire it off for the glaze firing. Since I have an electric, programmable kiln interface, I'm going to show you how that works. I use one of the pre-programmed cone firings. So you press the button that says cone fire, and at this point it asks you which cone. I'd just done a code six firing, so it already says cone six. I say enter. What speed do I want? Medium is what I just used. That's what I want again. So I say enter. If you want it a different speed, those buttons are down here. This is hold. So what that means, is that the top of the firing at cone six which is twenty-two hundred and thirty-two degrees, how long do I want it to keep it there? And I only want it to keep it there for five minutes. You can keep it a little longer sometimes. You can experiment to get different results based on how long you hold it. So now, it's ready to go. I can press start. The kiln turns on. I can press this button down here which is review, to make sure that I've made the correct selections. It'll go through everything. I just watch it to make sure I'm happy with what it is. And the very last thing to do is to put the peeps into the kiln holes. These hold in the heat in the kiln. But as I said earlier, if you're using cones, peeps are important for that. I leave one open because I don't have a vent on my kiln and this way the wax as it burns off of the pots, the fumes can come out, it circulates in the kiln a little bit better that way. These peeps, when the kiln is cooling, when it's done, when it gets down to below about eight hundred degrees, I pull out the peeps so the kiln will cool a little bit faster. But the kiln is now firing, and in twenty-four hours, we'll be able to open it and see what we've got inside."