 If I throw this in the fire, just like it is, it might heat up really fast, so it'll be hot on one side and cold on the other side and crack. So I'm thinking if I wrap it with some paper, then I'll just give it a bit of insulation for long enough, hopefully for it to gradually heat up evenly. I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm just doing it. Alright, it's pretty much dyed down in there, so let's go for it. Alright, I'm going to put one brick down at the bottom there, and one on the top here, maybe held up by a steel rod or something. Maybe I can just fit it across there. Anyway, try this. I guess I'll put a holy one and a solid one down here. I left the two bricks down there on the coals for about an hour, and then the other two bricks up here. And then I stacked all four bricks down here, two like this and then two on top of them. And just pile this full of wood. And I didn't light it, and I'm just letting it slowly heat up on its own. It looks like it did just light in there. It's been about 15 minutes since I put all that wood in there. And there's the brick. So we'll see how that does. I have not heard any pops yet, so that's a good sign. Man, the wind is coming in this way. Low on the fire, nice and hot. I heard another pop, and it's this tile out here cracking. So I've heard two pops and there's two cracks, so hopefully the bricks are still okay in there. The fire is cranking up pretty good in there. I think that has enough wood to go for a while, so I'm just going to forget about it. And then hopefully later I'll come back and there will be some bricks, hopefully. Well, either way, I'm going to get more information from my ceramic learnings. Whoa! I can see a brick in there. It looks totally intact. Oh, and the one at the back does too. I guess I just need to wait for this to finish and come back and check it in the morning. Yeah, sun's almost down. That's not promising. That one's a little tougher. The sound on my video got messed up in the middle when I was taking the bowl pieces out. What I was saying there was I think I heated it up too fast, and I needed to heat it up slower to get the moisture out of it before getting it really hot. Because when it popped, I heard it and it sounded like popcorn. You know, like moisture in there, turned to steam and exploded. And that did seem to make a difference with the bricks, which is why I put them in a really low fire for an hour before actually fire them. So none of those exploded in the fire. They turned out not very strong, and there's a couple things going on here that I noticed right away. One is they have lots of bits, like little rocks and stuff. So when it dried originally, it just left cracks everywhere. There were little rocks. Another thing is there's a pretty big color variation. I'm guessing because heat variations. Okay, next thing I'm going to try is take this, which has no little rocks in it. It's pretty pure clay. I'm going to preheat it to get all the moisture out and, you know, cook it like I did those bricks. And see if I can get it to not explode and come out all right. So why didn't I just start by getting a bunch of instructions and following them to make sure I get this right? Well, if I write a bunch of instructions when I started, it would just be this big blob of information that didn't mean anything. And I could follow it to the letter and make something that works, but I wouldn't understand what's going on. So a lot of times when I'm trying to learn something new, first I just try some experimentation. And then my brain starts coming up with the questions. And then when I look up, do some research and find the information, it just fills in the blanks of the questions I already have. And it makes so much more sense and I understand what's going on. There, now this one's all shiny on the inside too. Why did these ones explode? Maybe because they had too much moisture in them? Maybe if I put this out in the sun, it'll do better and heat it up with the fire? I don't know. The others didn't get in the sun now. Yeah, these ones, the first ones we made. My cookie didn't. I know, these came out great. And we just threw them right in the fire. What do you think? The beads, I don't think they got in the sun neither. So what was different about, what did you do to this clay? I put some leaves in it because it was cake dough. Wait, you were making cake dough? What else did you put in it besides leaves? I don't know, maybe sand. Can you make some more clay cake dough? Cause like I just strained it and made it all pure and perfect and it exploded. I think your cake dough, I want to know what you're putting in your cake dough. Do whatever you do for cake dough. Oh, I think we're on to something here. I knew I might have to add stuff to the clay to get it to work better. I didn't know I had an expert cake dough maker. Like this was one of the first things we tried and it is totally strong. And these two that I made with Aurora's cake dough clay batter, what do you call it? Cake dough clay batter? It was cake batter. Just cake batter? Anyway, these came out great too. So hopefully she can recreate that. Where'd you get the clay? From the pile that you took out to make the brick molding clay. That pile right there? Yeah. Are you putting all three of those things in? Just one. Oh, just one of those? These disappear now because they're all covered in mud but they're still there. So you think this is dry enough? Yeah. You think I can make stuff with it right now? Yeah. Alright, I'm going to try my one bowl today. I'm preheating it on a stove on medium. It's about on medium. Ooh, that's hot. Yeah. I just have a little grate here so it's not directly touching. Alright, I got a little bed of coals down there. I think I want a bed of coals under it. I don't really know. But I'm just thinking when I fire the thing, I want some heat coming from under too, not just on the top. Just took this off the stove. It's pretty hot. That should be hotter than the stove was. So I'll let it soak in there for a while before lighting a fire. There's a bit of breeze coming in so I put some broken brick pieces here. I knew they'd come in useful for something. Anyway, that'll keep wind from directly hitting the thing. Hopefully it'll go around. I still want that to heat evenly. While all that's going on, I'm making new little test bits. I didn't relight it. Just put a whole bunch of little sticks around the bowl and then some little bigger sticks on top of that and a little bit bigger sticks on top of that. And then waited. And maybe 20 minutes later, it just spontaneously combusted itself. Alright, I'm being a little bit impatient here but I'll leave it there for a little bit. Slowly cool it off. Okay, from what I understand, if I tap this, it should make a ringing sound and that means it's all strong and solid and intact. And if it makes a dull thud sound, that means it's no good. Aw, there's a crack over there. That side's all good though. Oh, yep, there's a crack on this side. Still, man, that's close. Yeah, I can see some cracks there. They don't go right through though. I can't see them on the inside. But I can see some hairline cracks that don't match up with those. Most of it's okay. This is the thickest part. Maybe that has something to do with it. Anyway, I'm getting close. I'm still using this. I'm calling this total usable. I wonder if some of that happened because I pulled it out of the coals too fast. Alright, on the next one, I'm going to try to keep my wall thickness even all the way around. I'm going to preheat it like I did this one. And I'm just going to leave it in there to cool off for hours as the coals cool off. And so I remember this one was pure clay. Nothing mixed with it. This is clay from that pile over there, which a bunch of this ash mixed into it. And this here is Aurora's cake mix. Or cake batter, whatever. This one does appear to hold water. The water does not appear to be soaking in either. Looks like my glazing technique worked. Which was just rubbing with a rock and my finger. And then I wiped a little bit of ash on there.