Earlier this week, I had several custom pieces in the kiln for a glaze fire. Wouldn’t you know — I had a kiln failure during the slow cool which is essential to create the deep Iron Red colors these pieces were supposed to have. Now the pieces that came out weren’t ruined by any means, but they certainly didn’t match the other pieces of this custom order out of earlier firings.
So… today will be spent making replacement pieces for the order and determining a cause of the failure. It appears the kiln just wasn’t cooling at the rate it was programmed, so it shutdown. Maybe just too tightly loaded. I’ve got some test pieces (aka weird, random pieces I had laying around) firing now to see if the failure is repeated.
Hopefully, all goes well with this firing and I can get the new pieces made and out the door to the very patient couple who ordered them.
Keep you fingers crossed.