The raku kiln running at full bore

This was the scene tonight in the first firing of the raku kiln for my handbuilding class this semester at the studio, aka the raccoon. Raccoon had a good night and class was a pleasure albeit a stinky one. It is a really good bunch of students. The only real failures were a vase of mine - a demo piece and a couple of things that kept sliding thru the tongs. This was just before we pulled the pieces with the kiln at about cone 06 1/2. The green flames are real. The are from copper? burning off the glaze. Nice evening.

We got some really heavy copper reduction with some nice copper reds instead of the transparent turquoise that was supposed to pop out. For reasons that elude me copper reds are the grail around here so we had high 5's all around. Mysterious.