Ahh... Raku now this is fun stuff. But be careful you might burn your hair off. I'm going to take you through a brief explanation of Raku, American Style. This is a picture of artist Zac Adams, one of my pieces, and me. At this present moment we are lifting the lid off the kiln or should I say we are lifting the kiln of it's base. We are doing this at the point of which the glazes on the piece reach a mature state. Although, we did not use any cones, We can still tell when the glaze matured in the kiln by peeping through the spy hole and watching the surface of the piece. The glazes bubble and blister as it gets closer to the maturing temperature. Shortly after the bubbling and blisters go down, the piece should look smooth and glow with a reflection almost like mirror. We fired this kiln to about 1700 F. What's Next...

Well the next action you must take is figuring out a way to get the piece into the combustible chamber. What is a combustible chamber? Well we used a trash can in this particular firing. You need a container of some sort that is as air tight as possible. Don't use Tupperware! Although it is very airtight you should find something that is not going to melt. Your container should be steel, or cement or both. Moving on, Zac and are attmepted to carry my piece in to the trash can. There are a number of suggestions I have to get your piece out of the kiln in into the combusitible materials and chamber. You can use tongs, Super High-temp gloves, or if it's really a large piece you could tip your piece over onto chicken wire. With one person on each side holding the chicken wire, slowly carring the piece over to the combustible chamber. In this particular firing we used a steel pipe. Zac slightly tipped my piece to the side and I inserted a pipe into a hole at the bottom of the piece. From there I carried the piece, with Zac as a spotter holding some tongs, to the trash can. Oh by the if you use a pipe glog the pipe in some way. If you don't, heat will travel through the pipe and come out where your hands and body of located. I learned that lesson in this picture.

Here we are trying to get the piece into the trash can that is loaded with combustible materials such as sawdust, wood chips, pine needles, hey, leaves, newspaper, and anything else you can think of. Please consider our environment. Make sure you leave plenty of room to fit your piece in though. We could have piled a bunch of combusible materials on the ground, set the piece on top of the pile and then put the garbage can upside down on top of everything. But we are doing the firing on blacktop and that would melt the blacktop plus this way we can control the ball of fire much better.

Wow! look at those flames... In this picture I am putting wood chips on top of the piece inside the trash can. As soon as possible I put the lid on the trash can, creating a reduction atmosphere. I then wait around twenty minutes and take the piece out of the trash can to see what it looks like. You can spray or dip the piece in water to freeze the surface look, because it may change if your cool it slowly. I didn't dip this pice in the water though because it was to big plus it had some cracks in it. The water probably would have caused it to shadder. In all of these pictures I am firing a slip cast piece that was cast from a form I originally hand built. I call the forms Vessels of Technology. Click here to see the final results. (Andy Clift) Make sure you see the Claystation's Firing Guide: Raku.