Kiln firing 6/7/09

We have had two firings in the last week. Most of the space in the firings has been used for tiles for our floor. We are refiring some that didn't meet our standards, so we can finish laying the major part of the floor. By spraying a little more glaze onto the surface of the tiles, the glaze on most evened out. So the firings have been mostly tile and a few pots. We have two electric kilns which we use for either the first, lower bisque firing or the second, higher glaze firing. The first firing is done to facilitate handling the pots while glazing them. Since the pots are quite fragile before the bisque firing, we usually try to at least complete that part of the process asap. Then they can sit on our studio shelves until we are ready to do a couple of glaze firings. If we are working towards completing some special or many pieces before a certain date, we might just bisque pots as soon as we have enough to fill a kiln and continue making pots, accumulating them for a while. Then we will set aside a week to glaze and fire a lot of pots at once.