Breakthrough!

Hello?Hello?Can you read this?Great!I finally worked out what the "blog this" button at the top of the page does (pretty obvious,really).
This morning I drove down to Yesod HaMaala for the unloading.Everything came out quite well,considering that neither of us particularly know what we are doing.We certainly got up to temperature-as you can see in the top left picture-those white blobs are the molten remains of cones 8,9 and 10,the latter indicating 1300 degrees when fired properly-in this state-flattened-it's more like the 1345 that we saw on the pyrometer,which is SO hot that it's a surprise that the clay stood up to it.The salting was even,but not excessive-we could have put in another kilo or two to get more depth of salt build-up,but this should improve as we gain more experience,and the inside of the kiln starts to build up its own layer of residual salt.Neither of us used especially suitable clays,and our use of the all-important slips is also in its infancy.Sydney (whose storage room is a treasure-chest of obscure inorganic materials) has a 25kg bag of Japanese spinel which (when he remembers where he put it) he feels might be useful:we spent half an hour trying to discover exactly what spinel is,and will let you know if it shows promise.I read the ingredients of his vitamin pills,which look like they would make a nice glaze-calcium,magnesium,silica and a whole bunch of metals.Sydney said it would be too expensive to make a glaze from vitamin pills,and I dare say he's right.As soon as I got back to my studio,I sold the nicest bowl from the salt kiln.Also today,something of a rarity-Turkish tourists in the studio.They even bought something!Things are looking up!Shabbat Shalom!