Wood Fired Tea Bowl

Success! WhaaHoo! A Raku, Wood Fired, Tea Bowl. I love the red. The outside of the bowl has some real nice fire flashings of black.

Dimensions approx. 4 and 3/4 inches high and 5 and 3/4 inches in diameter.

Stay tuned for more tea bowls. I'm out of bisque ware to fire and I have to collect and split more wood.

Raku Kiln

My first Wood-Fired Brick Raku Kiln. I got interested (more liked "Hooked") on Wood-Firing thanks to Tony Ferguson and his invitation to help fire his Anagama Kiln last
October (check out my blog archives for details). This kiln is basically Nesrin During's design that Steven Branfman describes in his book "Raku, A Practical Approach, 2nd Ed."

The main differences are that I used hard fire brick instead of insulated soft brick. And, instead of kiln shelves for the lid of the kiln I used a scrap piece of 2-inch fiber board.

Wood Fired Raku Kiln

I scrounged all my materials for this kiln.

I didn't have access or the money to buy a bunch of insulated soft brick so I used hard fire brick for my kiln, about 50 full and 10 split brick. The bricks are very loosely stacked and the fire box and firing chamber are one in the same.

I used an old refrigerator grate in the fire box to hold the wood, and the kiln lid is a scrap piece of hard fiber board that was given to me by a local furnace repair business.

The wood is from shipping pallettes that I get for free. I just have to pick them up and saw them up with a skill saw. I then split the wood into small pieces.

It takes approximately 3 pallettes and a couple hours to fire the kiln. I haven't yet fired another batch after the first initial firing but imagine subsequent firings would take about a half hour.