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from an earlier dollar-a-cord.
As the burning proceeded apace, Lanier increased his activity,
cutting and splitting the timber into eight-foot lengths: "When it first
starts to burn, I start chopping the wood up. It don't take much more
than a good truckload [a cord-and-a-half] for a burn." Lanier tended
not to feed die fire according to any schedule ("just whenever you can
put to it"), although his father's intervals were estimated at every halfhour
through noon, 15-20 minute intervals from noon until 5:00
T-.M., and almost continuously until around 7:00 P.M.
The fire at its peak glowed white hot, imparting a transparent
appearance to the ware in the kiln. As the flames swept through the
structure from the firebox to the chimney, they became visible outside,
where they began to "feather, to springle out, more or less like a
branch on a tree, and it's more or less free-floating" (fig. 35). At this
point, anywhere from fifteen to eighteen hours into the burning, the
kiln would have reached a maximum temperature of 2000 —
2200°F. 10 Checking to see that most of the smoke and soot had been
burned away inside the structure, father and son worked to maintain
this heat for at least another hour. According to Lanier, "[The fuel]
will burn just as fast as you can put it in; it's just a continuous job. If
you can stand to stoke the thing for two hours without turning
around, it's much better. But can't nobody do that. It's so hot against
it that you have to put a litde bit in it and move back and cool off."
Ware losses were sometimes sustained in the old days when,
through faulty judgment, a burning was terminated too soon. Some
White County potters, like Guy Dorsey's father, would remove a
brick at the chimney end where they guessed the coolest spot in the
kiln would be located. Dropping wooden splints through die opening,
diey could see their ware, "and when those sticks hit down at the
bottom of those churns in the upper end of the kiln, that blaze would
flare up and shine against [them], and if it shined glassy [the glaze]
was done melted down to die bottom [of the ware]. If it wasn't, you'd
plug the hole and give it more time." Other potters would hook out
trial pieces at this point to see whether or not their glazes had melted
sufficiendy.
Late in life, Cheever Meaders developed his own version of the
pyrometric cone for accurately measuring the peak heat in his kiln.
Taking a handful of sediment from his glaze tub (the same glaze that
was applied to the ware in the kiln), he would place it in a rag,
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