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Making Pit Fired Pot Food Safe


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You'd have to figure out a way to keep all the combustion materials out of the glaze during the pit firing. And even then the glaze will probably partially melt in the pit firing, or carbon trap, or do some other weird thing and come out badly. There's simply not a good way to do it. Pit firing is not for functional work.

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Are you looking to make a functional pot that has a pit fired "look", or are you trying to make a pit fired pot 'be functional'?

 

 

My work is fired in a cone 10 gas kiln at a local community college along with the work of ~80+ other students.  I often produce work with soda and wood fired look by the marks and final surface treatment before the piece is placed on the shelf to be loaded into the kiln.  The technique was developed by looking at a lot of soda and wood fired pieces and becoming familiar with the colorations and surface textures that were being used to classify the type of firing.  After pondering and reading the literature on what reagents produce what kinds of signatures on the surfaces of the clay bodies I wanted to use, I begin testing.  It took about two semesters 40 firings before I got reasonable results. 

 

My recommendation:

Study the surfaces of pit fired work and then think about how to produce those effects in your cone 6 regular firings with applied reagents, stains, etc.  Then you will have something that will 'look like pit fired' and still be functional.

 

LT

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