A few shots of my studio and kiln

[ronlang]

Hi all
I have been meaning to get some stuff up on this site for some time now. And the set up of a "Pots and Containers" forum is great! I hope I can contribute here and share some of my work and answer any pottery related questions folks may want to ask. I am retired from teaching ceramics at a private art college in Baltimore. And along with my wife Sharon, also a retired ceramics professor, we have a home, studio and 90 cubic ft wood fired kiln in Central Pennsylvania. I am happy also to serve as a new member to the ABS board and got to meet the other members at the recent Louisville conference. I'll put up a few shots of our studio and kiln to start things off.
Best regards,
Ron Lang

Wood Kiln with Studio in background

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[dbrock]

That is totally awesome. I have been doing some Raku clay pot firing. I have started to build a wood burning kiln to get pots with the ash glazes, but time and cost are always a problem. Let me know when you are making pots. I have a couple of trees come spring that would look really great in these types of pots. Do you make custom orders?

[ronlang]

Wow that was quick! I do take custom orders and I'd ask that you visit our website and contact me from there. http://www.langbonsai.com/
Where are you located?
Ron

[dbrock]

Down in Texas, near Houston. I have Ryan Neil coming in September and after he has helped me with my trees, I know I will have two trees that I would like ash glazed pots for. Maybe even more.

[ronlang]

Here are some shots I took of a recent kiln loading and firing. It takes my wife and I about 2 to 2 1/2 months time to make, bisque and glaze enough work to fill the 90 cubic feet of our kiln.

Shelves full of bisque ware ready to glaze

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36" long Bisqued Rectangle

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Glaze spraying

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[ronlang]

The start of the loading. These kiln shelves on the bottom back of the stack are two, 21" x 31" silicon carbides. The rest of this stack will be with lighter and thinner shelves that are 18" x 24" on left and 24 x 24" on right. In #3 shot you see the back stack finished and the front begun with the thicker shelves on the bottom. In #4 I convert over to the thinner shelves to complete the front stack.

#1

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#2

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#3

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[ronlang]

Continuing in #4 we are a little less than 1/2 way finished the front stack.

#4

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#5

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This was a kiln with a good many larger pots especially ovals as you see in the front stack. I could have actually used another layer of pots at the top but I ran out.

#6

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[ronlang]

A shot of the firing into the evening. We preheat overnight and then fire for 16 to 18 hours the second day.

Firing, maybe 4 hours before the finish

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Four days of cooling and we can open it up to see the results!

Opening

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Any questions or comments are welcome.
Ron

Closeup of top shelves

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[pJkatich]

Great set-up Ron!

90 cubic feet, now that is quite a bit of kiln space to fill up. But I'm sure that has to do with your method of firing. I have never had the pleasure of firing a kiln with wood. It looks like fun.

Are you firing to ^10? That's what it looks like based on the cone packs.

Thanks for sharing these photos of you studio and kiln.

Regards,
Paul

[ronlang]

Great set-up Ron!
Are you firing to ^10? That's what it looks like based on the cone packs.
Regards,
Paul

Thanks Paul, yes the last three cones standing are 10,11 and 12. Cone 10 was just starting to bend when I quit stoking the wood. You can see the front set of cones on the middle shelf all completely flat. They were 5, 7 and 9. So this firing was a full cone 9, purposely a little less then the full 10, that I usually fire. Some of the glazes were getting a little too fluxed, too shiny in recent firings. So I tried a little cooler in this one. I've fired two kilns since this one and I am back to the full cone 10 and am more selective about where in the kiln I place certain glazes to take advantage of cooler firing areas.
Ron