I had the good fortune of having Scot, a new member of our Syracuse Ceramic Guild, come down to help with the prep for a wood firing workshop scheduled for May 15 and 16. Dave also helped but I forgot to get the camera again when he came. Sorry Dave. The picture above shows him finishing the beech up, a nice finishing wood as its heat value is very high at 89-91 and it is plentiful here. He proved to be a quick study and had the art of splitting down in no time. You may not think it's that hard, but there are some woods that are challenging. The grain is wavy in some woods such as apple. You can see some of it in the lower right corner of the picture. I am trying apple wood this firing. I have an old apple orchard on the property with parts of the trees coming down at times. It does have some very nice coaling qualities like beech does. I also have some large hophornbeam that I girdled two years ago and are now standing seasoned wood waiting to be cut. It has the highest heat value in my woods. It will be interesting to see how it looks in some line blends. I usually start at 60% ash, 40% feldspar with 10% china clay added.
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