I couldn't waste a perfectly good barrel fire without doing some experimenting. Before I started the fire, I put a few of mostly small pieces of pottery (1.5 inches wide and high) in the bottom of an ash-filled metal barrel. Only one piece was larger and might have been of hand dug Draper clay. All were bisqued fired but one little jigger, which was greenware. I wrapped each pot in a salt-soaked ragged and thoroughly dried them in the sun before barbecuing. I got many complaint from my kids who were cooking hotdogs when the largest pot exploded and a shard or two flew out of the barrel with a bang. Oops...there goes my Mother of the Year award again, lol. I like the results. I'm not sure the salted rags did anything in particular but the barrel seemed to have reached a high enough temperature to reach the clays maturity....cone 5 maybe. The chips on the side of one pot occurred, I think, when we kept adding sticks on top of everything not knowing where the pots were in the ashes. Just some outdoor fun.
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