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Description
Hi there, this is a series of informal shots that I took at a work group for a salt firing where I've been taking pottery lessons.

This kiln is dry laid brick, brought up to about 2,800 degrees (if memory serves, I might be off by a couple hundred.) When I arrived in the evening it had been heating up since two evenings before and was ready to be salted. Basically, you pour in the salt and the intense heat vaporizes it and breaks it down into sodium and chloride, which, in layman's terms, glazes the pots. It's not nearly so simple and our teacher explained it more thoroughly, but I could never repeat it with any accuracy so I won't.

The quality of all these shots isn't too great since I don't have much control over my digital camera and the lighting was odd.

ABOUT THIS SHOT: What you're seeing here are flames coming out of the peephole over the firebox. I thought it was pretty neat so I got some shots of it. This is cropped quite a bit rather than resized so you could see the flames. Might seem kind of odd, but that's basically what it looked it. The smoke you're seeing is actually water vapor, salt and very weak hydrochloric acid.

Description
Hi there, this is a series of informal shots that I took at a work group for a salt firing where I've been taking pottery lessons.

This kiln is dry laid brick, brought up to about 2,800 degrees (if memory serves, I might be off by a couple hundred.) When I arrived in the evening it had been heating up since two evenings before and was ready to be salted. Basically, you pour in the salt and the intense heat vaporizes it and breaks it down into sodium and chloride, which, in layman's terms, glazes the pots. It's not nearly so simple and our teacher explained it more thoroughly, but I could never repeat it with any accuracy so I won't.

The quality of all these shots isn't too great since I don't have much control over my digital camera and the lighting was odd.

ABOUT THIS SHOT: What you're seeing here are flames coming out of the peephole over the firebox. I thought it was pretty neat so I got some shots of it. This is cropped quite a bit rather than resized so you could see the flames. Might seem kind of odd, but that's basically what it looked it. The smoke you're seeing is actually water vapor, salt and very weak hydrochloric acid.