Loading the Hobagama Mid-rear
gary navarre
Wouldn't ya know it... I fret all summer about getting to editing the kiln loading clips into manageable shorts and all of a sudden they start falling into place. The mid-rear setting posed a big problem because the back edge would be just over 33" wide leaving about a 10"x2.5' gap to the tail setting which would require something to catch fuel if I found a spy hole in the wall that could be used as a secondary stoke hole. Since I'm not up to vary tall pots yet I settled on setting pieces on broken shelf sections and came up some ingenious posting and shims. Once I changed the overlapping top shelves I got my secondary stoke hole...
Part 1, 6:42 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trSFi6paGh8
Part 2, 6:41 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nel_ltXjVR4
Part 3, 10:30 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=It3uLI7n6XA
Part 4, 10:31 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUlb-kVWS-g
At about this point the weather started dipping below freezing and got rainy so I started setting cans of charcoal in the chamber...
http://public.fotki.com/GindaUP/ca/kpap/lc/charcoal-lite-befor.html
... and eventually bricked up the door and practiced lighting wood in the pignose and letting it slowly cook overnight...
http://public.fotki.com/GindaUP/ca/kpap/lc/another-pignose.html
... to do a wadding and final greenware drying fire so the pots don't freeze while I make more. I'm really getting the hang of bricking up the door and lighting the pignose within about an hour and a half. The heat stayed below 200ºF and the chamber crown was still warm 16 hours later...
http://public.fotki.com/GindaUP/ca/kpap/lc/16-hours-later-1.html
Next will be the mid-front and front. I think I'm going to make some larger bowls and taller vases to open up the front of the load a bit and split the flame top to bottom using a couple of under 3" settings in the center of the mid-front to let the back of the load be more of the heat sink/dam before hitting the exit flue. The first bottom shelf up front would then be on 6" posts, the next behind that in the mid-front are on 4½" posts with the flame splitter shelves above those and big 10"+ pots on top. That just might give me a more even firing top to bottom. The more open setting might also allow ash to fly past and not flux the glazes too much where it might be ^12 near the throat arch. I suppose I should set these pots on sea shells just to be safe and not have to cut pots off the shelf. If I recall correctly the tail will catch more ash because of the constriction of the space but it won't run as much because it could only be ^8 or ^9.
I'm just as excited as you folks to see what happens so stay tuned, stay in there, and don't let them fool ya eh!
Gary Navarre
Navarre Pottery
Navarre Enterprises
Norway, Michigan, USA
http://www.youtube.com/GindaUP
http://public.fotki.com/GindaUP/