Low-Fire Soda

[Kathleen Miller]

I'm curious about low-fire soda and if it possible. The studio I have recently joined has this old electric kiln that someone had converted to a fire as a soda kiln, but then left before he had ever fired it. We would be using propane as our fuel so I doubt we would be able to get up to high tempertures. I have some experience firing soda in a gas kiln to cone 11, but I don't have any expereince firing soda to low temps. Does anyone have any recipes, suggestions, or advice on how to go about a low-fire soda?

[June Perry - Shambhala Pottery]

You'll have to add borax to the soda ash or bicarb of soda to get it to properly melt at cone 6. You'll find that a lot of the cone 10 flashing slips will work at cone 6.

[Keith Phillips]

Julia Galloway http://www.juliagalloway.com/alchemy.html
does cone 6 soda, with some resources on her site. I believe Mark Knott (who is on salt/soda) does it as well. http://www.marknott.com
Kyle House and Nancy have also been doing cone 6 salt lately: http://kylehouser.blogspot.com/

[Phil Finder]

I am currently firing in an electric kiln converted into a soda kiln fueled by propane. I fire to cone 10 without a lot of effort. If you can rig a blower or if you have a forced air burner, it will FLY up to cone 10 and beyond. Give it a try :)

[Lyla]

here's some more cone 6-8 soda tests
http://lylakaplanpottery.com/glazes.html