Experimental gas kiln project

Recently I've become very interested in black glazes and the Japanese technique of Hikidashi, where pots are pulled straight from the kiln at top temperature and allowed to cool extremely rapidly in the air, or immersed in water. I wanted to find a way to fire tea bowls quickly outside, with a view to designing a small kiln with a removabe roof or wall .. I could then use (very long!) tongs to grab the bowl at over 1200 degrees C and place it in water or a reduction chamber, as is done with raku pots.

As I've not fired with gas before, I set up a little test kiln yesterday. The kiln has a very small chamber with only enough room for three small pots or maybe one large tea bowl. I was over-optimistically hoping I could fire it to cone 10 in less than 2 hours, in the event it took 4 hours but still pretty quick compared to a large gas kiln.

I was really happy to get cone 10 to bend (1285 degrees C on the pyrometer) since the kiln design was rather ad hoc, rule-of-thumb, and quickly assembled. Surprisingly, the results were very pleasing .. I would have liked a little more reduction but I need more practice and knowledge of how to create heavy reduction in a gas kiln.

Here are some photos of the firing and two of the pots:

 

Thanks for reading.