LindsayM

Thank you so much. When you say you sometimes skip the first segment, do you mean that if you preheat the day before, you just go straight into segment 2? Thank you

Thanks Min, that's very helpful. I spiral wedge big amounts and then rams head wedge when they are smaller quantities. So, mostly the bubbles have gone. But occasionally I find a little air bubble has got through the wedging. I'll do a bit cut and slam too and see if that helps. Thanks again -)

Thanks everyone for your very helpful info!

That is very interesting. I do seem to be getting bloating bubbly things on the reclaimed clay. I'll try wedging it for longer. Wish I had a pugmill!!

I have been using the scutt cone 06 schedule. But before I had the scutt I would do 100C to 600C and then 150C to 1000C. Would that be a good thing to try? I was thinking I could try bisque firing to 04. Do you think that would help? Yes bisque firing and then glaze firing to cone 6 (not single firing). Would you mind sharing your bisque firing schedule? For the glaze fire, I did see this schedule on digitalfire https://digitalfire.com/schedule/c6dhsc Do you think that might help? Thank you so much for your help.

Thanks for your reply, here is a picture.

Hello, I wonder if you can help me. I'm having an issue with quite a number of my pots bloating when they are fired and I'm not sure if it's the clay, the glaze, or the firing schedule. The bloating first happened a couple of months ago. I have a newish kiln. It's a Skutt KMT818. It's more efficient than my last kiln which was old and took ages to reach cone 6. I've noticed when I use cones in the kiln that the pre-programmed cone 6 temperature (cone fire mode) actually gets to cone 7. So I wondered if the clay was just overfired. I mainly use Scarva Earthstone ES10 Extra Smooth. And it can be fired up to 1280C, so it shouldn't be overfired at cone 7 should it? The other thought that I had is that I reclaim my clay. Is it possible that the clay is bloating because it has been reclaimed and doesn't contain quite the right balance of fine and bigger particles? My pottery supplier suggested doing a slow cool. So I tried that yesterday. I manually set the kiln for 1222C. Did a 5-minute hold at target temp, and then I ramped down at 65C an hour to 800C. All the extra heatwork from the slow cool meant the cone 7 cones had fallen when I opened the kiln. There was less bloating in this kiln load, but still a few pieces had bloated. Does anyone have any helpful advice? Very many thanks