Fire and Ice: Wood-Firing at Ole Gilliam Mill Park, Sanford, NC

The schedule  and details of this multiday event is as follows with exact times to be determined;

Glazing, Wadding and Loading the Kiln: Dec 2 & Dec 3.

Please bring bisqued cone 10 clay pots; as a rough guideline, use empty Highwater clay boxes to

transport your pots and plan on bringing between two to four packed boxes to the firing. During this

weekend, your pots will be glazed, and wadded before being loaded into the kiln. We will make sure

that everyone gets as many of their pots into the kiln as possible. Once all of the pots have been loaded,

the kiln will be bricked up and sealed with mud.

Before leaving make sure that you have signed up for the stoking schedule.

Candling, and Firing to Cone 10: Beginning on the evening of December 8, and continuing through the

weekend until cone 10 is reached.

Please wear steel-toed boots, work gloves and natural fiber (i.e., cotton) clothing (as synthetic fabrics

melt). Please bring some food to share as well.

The stoking schedule will be prepared based on the number of participants. I would prefer to have at

least 3 people on each stoking shift and limit each shift to between 3 to 4 hours each. The initial kiln

candling is slow and will last throughout the first evening. The pace of stoking will increase throughout

Saturday; by Saturday afternoon we will be heating the kiln at between 100 °F to 200 ° F per hour.

Stoking will continue until we reach Cone 10. Once Cone 10 is reached, the kiln will be stoked one last

time, and the kiln will be closed.

The kiln will remain sealed until the following weekend.

Unloading and Clean-up: December 16 th & 17 th

The kiln will be unloaded starting at 10am Dec 16 th .

Please bring dust masks, steel-toed boots and work gloves. You may want to bring an extra set of

clothing to change into after the cleaning work is completed so that you are not driving home wearing

(extremely) dusty clothing.

We will be setting up tables to hold pots as they are passed out of the kiln during unloading. Please bring

some food to share as well as we admire the results of our hard work together.

Before leaving we will be cleaning the kiln shelves and posts, reapplying kiln wash to the shelves as

needed and cleaning out the kiln and firebox.