We have a new Kiln!!!!

We are very pleased to announce that we now have a gas and wood fired soda kiln, built during a workshop with Joe Finch, author of ‘Kiln Contruction: a brick by brick approach’

Katrina invested £9000 in the site, which had to be excavated, a concrete floor laid and 8 wooden posts supporting a roof and 2 sides erected, before Joe arrived to build the kiln. She knows that she will recoup the money in time and is really please to be able to offer more firing choices for her students, now offering; Soda, Raku, Smoke pit, Reduction and Oxidation firings.

Katrina Said:

“Joe Finch was amazing and our workshop was really successful, we had 10 students all very keen and extremely hard working. I feel so blessed to have had such a great group of fellow potters and students helping.

The workshop included firing the kiln, which was really informative, a new kiln needs time to get used to firing, each firing teaches you new things. We found that Joe’s burners were too strong for the kiln size, burning inefficiently, which meant we didn’t reach our desired temperature of 1230 C until midnight. Tim Bartel, one of the team has very kindly given me couple of smaller burners which we will use next time and hope that they will be more efficient. We didn’t get a

proper supper that night but enjoyed drinking wine and eating cheese and biscuits, between stoking with wood and adding soda to the kiln late into the evening.”