Smoke Firing

With smoke firing you never know what end result you are going to get.
There are so many variables. For example, saw dust burns a lot slower than wood shavings. It matters what size holes you have drilled in the side of your smoke chamber ( in my case, dustbin).

You place your work on top of a layer of sawdust

blue-torso

binfire

 When you have filled the entire bin with sawdust and wood shavings, you light it.torso-smoked

After about 15 hours the bin has cooled down and it is safe to have a look at what you’ve got.

This torso

torso1

was glazed with the same glaze and oxides as this one…

torso2

and this one.

torso3

The one difference is the amount of soot I added to the saw dust and the way I packed the wood shavings and saw dust around the torso. I have found that copper oxide will turn bright red under very strong reduction so I try to starve the atmosphere inside the smoke chambers of oxygen.

To learn more about smoke firing, and  get a chance to experiment and play, you are welcome to join my ceramic and smoke firing workshops in Hastings.

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