On restacking brick, asking for help, and teaching A.I. to read handwritten firing notes.
It felt good to go work on the wood kiln yesterday. I spent the time taking down the brick arch that I had dry stacked over the form so that I could restack the brick with the fire clay and slurry in between. The day was overcast, and we even got rain, which made it nice and cool to work the kiln. Last year, when putting in the firebox and base, it was quite hot. I had to put up a tent and have plenty of water for myself and those helping me. The build is going slowly, but at this pace I am able to make decisions and also have time to work out issues I might see or would like to correct. Also I feel great, as from waiting there came up more hard bricks for sale from another local wood-fire artist. It is hoped I can make a few trips out and have enough brick to build a small, fast-fire kiln for my own work.
One of the biggest issues is knowing when and how to ask for help. Then, after getting that help, what information to use from the help. Many times in the groups there can be a million ways to do a thing, and the hard-and-fast rules you thought were hard and fast are simply things people have always done in the past, and we may no longer even know why we do them. Still, others who push the limits and break the rules show that such rule-breaking can be done for the most part, and that in turn sets new guidelines and opens things up a little. Also, taking advice from others may come into conflict with the previous owners of the kiln, as it fired well at the previous studio, so I had planned to put it back up very much the same way. Those members are also in many of the groups I am in, and if they see me asking questions it might seem as if I have no idea what I am doing, which I don’t, and it might make them worry about how the rebuild is going.
Right now I do not need stokers or people to help me fire the kiln, but builders to come and stack bricks. That has been a challenge due to my work schedule, as I am not able to reliably set up work days for the kiln like last year. I also need to work out family obligations and create work for my website and the shows that come almost back to back starting in August through November, ending with the Christmas show here. So all the making will need to be coordinated in such a way that I can schedule a wood firing for free as a test to see how Ana fires and get to know her. Each kiln is different and will fire differently almost every time, depending on even the weather, the fuel, who is on the team, and the firing management style. With everything constantly evolving, I needed a way to track the changes and what stays the same.
I have loaded a lot of the past Ana firing information into Claude A.I. and have worked out her stoking patterns and the issues they had at the last place. This was a huge help, as many times information about firings is recorded but then is left in the notebook and never looked at until the next firing. Loading everything into A.I. can help do an overall analysis and also compare firings. This helps to work out troubleshooting techniques, create centerlines for damper and draft placement, and stoking methods. It has been great to see what A.I. has done with the firing records. Using A.I. as a tool is a nice way to have data looked at quickly and efficiently. It also can be wrong at times, so I trust but verify. If things are incorrect I let it know so it can learn. I simply took photos of the handwritten notes and loaded them into Claude. It seemed to work out great so far.
If I were living yesterday a second time: I would have taken more photos of the dry stack before I took it down. The before matters as much as the after when you’re learning from the build.
Things I am grateful for: An overcast day cool enough to work the kiln without a tent. Ana, who is teaching me things about herself one brick at a time.
If I get to live to be 86, I might only have: 12,647 days left.
Enjoyed this post? Get The Pottery Dailies delivered to your inbox every day.Subscribe on Substack.
Connect with Creek Road Pottery LLC:
Website | Shop | Collectors Club | The Pin Tool Podcast | Instagram | Bluesky
