How To Pit Fire

Don’t be thrown off by the title of this post. This is not the only way to pit fire. This it may not be the best way to pit fire. This is documentation of a pit firing that my wife and I did in July of 07 that gave us good results. It was a lot of fun! My hope is that some potters who have never pit fired before might see this page and be inspired to try it, or that other potters who are familiar with the process might learn something from our method. Make a camping trip out of it and go pit fire!




We numbered each piece and took pictures so that we would remember which number went with which piece. This way we could remember what we wrapped each piece in and have good data on what gave us good and bad results.



We bisque fired everything to cone 04 and many of our pieces had red or grey terra sigillata added to them. Any of the pieces where we added terra sigillata were then burnished.


My beautiful wife and I wrapped our pottery in all kinds of goodies. Iron ox, copper carb, banana peals, copper wire and sea weed were known to give good effects, but we had fun trying all kinds of different things to see if we could burn some pretty colors on to our pieces.




On this particular piece I made a crater in it and melted some blue glass in the crater during the bisque fire. Now it is covered in iron ox, banana peals, seaweed, and some salmon skin left over from dinner. We then wrapped it in tin foil to keep everything together.





With some of our work we used tin foil to keep everything together and with some we used newspaper. The tin foil did not burn off in the fire so it only burned what we wrapped inside of it on to the pot, kinda like a sager fire. The newspaper burned off and got some of the effects from the fire as well as what was wrapped inside the newspaper. However, the effects from what was inside the newspaper were not as dramatic as the effects of from what was inside the tin foil. Both wrapping in newspaper and wrapping in tin foil gave nice effects. It just depends on what you are going for.

AT THE BEACH!

First, find a place to dig and get to work!

Layer #1: Hay. This is because we want smoldering under the pots, not a cold, sandy base.

Layer #2: Manure. Manure has organic components that can create some nice effects on the pots.










Layer #3: Charcoal. We let the charcoal burn until we had a nice hot base. Just like starting a barbecue.








Layer #4: A light layer of seaweed. Seaweed can sometimes leave some nice greens on you work just make sure not to use so much that you put out the charcoal. You can always add more later once the wood is on and the fire is going.







Layer #5: The pottery and the wood. Pottery first, then we carefully placed the wood around the pottery. We stuffed newspaper and hay in between the wood and then we lit the fire.

Let the sun go down.

Let the fire burn until there is a nice bed of hot coals covering your pots.








When the fire is starting to burn out, (if your at the beach) cover it up with sand. This way your pots will cool down slowly and you can avoid thermal shock.








Come back in the morning when the pots are cool.

From out of the sand:

When you dig up the pots, wear a mask because you don’t want the fine particles from the ashes getting in your lungs. You can polish any of the pieces that you burnished with shoe polish or furniture polish for a nice shine at this point.

And, of course, don't forget to clean up your mess.