THE CRAFT OF FIRE

We were hoping to do another firing in the oven before the cold set in, but alas... We didn't have enough clay models ready for firing, and well, that's the mud oven back there. So we've moved our operations indoors, working on molds and casts of various kinds again . (This is a clay model of the meditation Hall found in many of the Parks of Study and Reflection around the world.)   And then we cooked up some casting beeswax, with a particular recipe of beeswax, paraffin and tree resin in a 70:20:10 ratio. All melted up together in a double boiler, that wonderful beeswax smell filling the kitchen... Here are a couple molds filled up. And here's a wax Hall and a clay one being fixed up because the tip didn't come out right. For some reason we kept getting an air pocket whenever we cast the Venus in wax, so she'd come out deformed with no legs... So in she'd go, back into the pot of wax for another attempt. ...

Okay, so on August 30, 2014 we tried another temperature test. This time we used a digital pyrometer and stuck the probe into the oven, with the cable wrapped up in ceramic fibre so it wouldn't melt. We also used the cones again, except this time we covered them with a flower pot (like a saggar) so we could surround the pot with lots of hot coals and not worry about the cones getting broken. The thinking was that maybe maybe we would reach cone 014 if the fire/heat was a bit more protected from the cool air moving in, etc. And we of course took advantage and fired up some more pieces. Outdoors it was a sunny 26°C and we started up at 2:55pm. Getting to 100° took a little while, but after that things moved quickly. 100° at 3:25 pm 200° at 3:36 pm 400° at 4:00 pm In just over an hour we reached 500° (4:10pm), but around that point the temperature readings started fluctuating wildly, jumping up and down in a flash by 60° or more, and then settling for...

One question we are all very curious about is how hot can this mud oven get? When working in the Craft of Fire, you start to develop a point of view on the history of the human being as the history of the production and management of ever-hotter fires. If you can get your fire hotter, you can produce new kinds of materials, and that brings with it certain (big) advantages:   "When those who had forged iron came along and attacked the ones who had bronze weapons, the bronze would break. They came with iron and broke the bronze of the other guys. Run! It was ridiculous. T errible.  They had to run because their bronze would break. And so things moved from the Bronze age to the Iron age. The people of bronze had a superior civilization, with great productions, but they hadn't produced iron. And the other primitive types around where they lived had n't melted bro nze, they went straight and melted iron. And like that they defeated the ones with the superior civili...

So we finished the mud oven last fall, then it was a freeeeezing cold winter for waaaaay too long, and then finally, finally, last weekend we fired it up for a first cooking-fire test drive. The oven revealed its earthly origins by sprouting moss, clover, and even a few tiny mushrooms. The firing and cooking was great fun - and pizza-making lends itself easily to group activity.  And the oven worked very well. In our enthusiasm, though, we probably started cooking too early, because the crusts weren't getting properly baked, meaning the oven floor wasn't hot enough. As time went on, the crusts got more crisp, so we probably should have waited about 2 hours before starting, instead of about 1 hour 20 minutes. But hey, no one really complained and we all had a great time.  (Although in the photo below it looks like DZ is burning his mouth and not having a great time.) We're now ready for more cookery, and al...