A Kinder and Gentler Woodfiring

This Weekend, we fired the wood kiln again. We had some issues last time with flames coming out of the kiln in the wrong places, backdrafting, and poor draw. We packed the cracks with fiber and the kiln is working much better. We were also very careful not to overstoke or let too much air in the front. The result was a very cleanly burning well controlled firing.I started the kiln on Friday. There was some loading to do first so it was 10:30 before the fires were lit but by 7:30 when I left we were up to 1400F and climbing. I went back out Saturday afternoon and helped for 4 or 5 hrs. The night crew reported no stalling , no excess coal buildup, no related panic, clean burning and over 2000F. I left about 4 and at that point we were stoking a couple of bags (yes, bags) of scrap dowel stock every 10 minutes or so. It was all very relaxed and undramatic but cone 11 was down on top, 10 starting to go in the bottom of the first chamber and we had just begun stoking the soda chamber @ 1500F. The last report on facebook this morning says that it finished up just as happily as it started and all is well. It takes a lot of work and cooperation from at lot of people to do this and I would like to thank them all. I can't wait to open next week and see the results!