My last firing on the 9th November was the quickest on record, coming in at 11.5 hours. This was due to the wood all being dry pallet boards with few bearers. It did however result in a lighter reduction than usual so some of the clay/slip combinations came out a little lighter orange than normal – but it did benefit the green to black and barium blue glazes.

I had a couple of soft bricks in the kiln trying out different experimental soda resisting coatings and had one that shows promise but more works needed. Another of the surprises were the re-fired anagama pieces that had first been fired a couple of weeks prior in Janet’s Roto-O-Rangi kiln. These mostly showed an improvement with the dry ash melting fully and more colour coming out. Some had been over-glazed with a thin red Shino which also seemed to help a bit.