Kevin B. Posted August 14, 2018 Report Share Posted August 14, 2018 I've been a wood burning low-fire hobbyist for many years. Done primitive style pit firings, low-fire traditional raku, soda vapor firing, etc. But recently I've been toying with the idea of "stepping up" into the stoneware range and have been doing a bit of research on kiln design and various wood firing traditions. I'm definitely leaning towards a small anagama or dragon-style kiln to make something Bizen-esque or something with very minimal glaze application, I like the idea of letting the clay and the fire become the decoration. So I was doing a bit of video watching on the ol' youtube, and I started noticing something with Bizen pottery... when placing straw in the pots, a sort of loose, crumbly- looking "wafer" was placed on top to hold the straw in place during firing, but I saw no evidence of the material sticking to the inside of the finished pots. Anyone have any idea what the wafers are? What material could/would burn off in a cone 10 firing so as not to leave a mark on the pot? Curiosity has definitely got the better of me and I can't find any reference to it on the web. You can see what I'm talking about in this vid @ 1:55 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMwwlLGsITI & here @ 1:40 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTEcTZn1Z3I Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Benzine Posted August 14, 2018 Report Share Posted August 14, 2018 Kevin, I would say the "Wafers", as you call them, are probably some type of wadding. Wadding is something used in wood, soda, salt firings, so that the wares don't stick to the shelves, or each other, if things are being stacked a bit. Commonly wadding is made from Alumina and EPK, much like a kiln wash, only way thicker. There are also recipes for wadding, that contain calcium. The wafers in the video, also look like they have a bit of texture. So they may have some type of grog mixed in, to reduce shrinkage and combat thermal shock. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neilestrick Posted August 14, 2018 Report Share Posted August 14, 2018 Wood kiln wadding is usually made of fireclay and silica sand. When I used to wood fire, I used 20 mesh sand, which is pretty big, just enough fireclay to hold the sand together, and a bunch of flour. The flour would burn out, leaving a very open, crumbly wadding that was easy to remove from the pots. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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