Pottery · for potters and small ceramic studios
FireCard is a kiln firing and glaze test log for potters and small ceramic studios. Each firing becomes one card: a photo of the loaded kiln with the cone and the peak of your schedule on it, every segment you programmed, and after unloading the result photo and your notes. Test tiles go into a photo index you can filter by glaze, clay body, cone, and atmosphere, and each glaze recipe gets its own note. Everything stays on your phone, with no account and no connection to the kiln.
Take a photo of the loaded kiln before the lid goes down. The card puts the cone number and the peak of your schedule right on that photo, with every segment listed beneath it: rate, target temperature, and hold, as you keyed them into the controller. After unloading you add the result photo and a note on how the cone pack bent.
Every test tile is a photo tagged with its glaze, clay body, cone, and atmosphere. Filter the index to cone 6 oxidation and the grid narrows to those tiles, so the one you remember from last spring is a few taps away instead of somewhere on a shelf.
A recipe note holds the materials and amounts you weighed out, the additions, and what you changed from one batch to the next. When you want to see how that glaze has actually fired, filter the tile index by its name.
Most potters already keep some kind of firing log. It might be a printed sheet clipped to the wall beside the kiln, a column in a spreadsheet, or the back page of a sketchbook. The numbers usually make it down: the cone, the time the kiln went on, maybe the peak. What rarely survives is what the load looked like, which shelf the test tiles were on, and what actually came out.
FireCard treats each firing as a single card built around photos. The load photo is the face of the card, with the cone and the peak of your schedule on it. Underneath sit the schedule segments, the kiln it ran in, the result photo, and your notes. Looking back over a season of firings becomes a matter of looking at kilns rather than reading rows.
Test tiles have a way of piling up in shoeboxes, on windowsills, and in a bucket by the wheel. The details that make a tile useful, the glaze, the clay under it, the cone, and the atmosphere, are usually written on the back in iron oxide or in a notebook kept somewhere else. FireCard keeps a photo of each tile with those four details attached.
The index is a grid of tile photos. Filter by glaze, clay body, cone, or atmosphere, alone or together, and the grid narrows as you go. Comparing one glaze across three clay bodies, or pulling up every reduction tile, takes a couple of taps.
Each kiln gets a profile: electric, gas, or wood, and its capacity. Every firing card names the kiln it ran in, so the small test kiln, the big electric, and the occasional wood firing never blur together in your notes.
Glaze recipe notes are plain records of what you mixed. Write the materials and amounts as you weighed them, the colorant or opacifier additions, and what changed from one batch to the next. FireCard keeps the recipe exactly as you wrote it and does not rewrite or rescale it.
FireCard is a log, not a kiln controller. It does not connect to the kiln, read a thermocouple, or send a program anywhere; you type the schedule you already set. It does not recommend firing schedules, and it does not do glaze chemistry such as unity formulas or batch calculations. There is no account, nothing to sync, and no tracking. The log lives on your phone and works without a connection, which matters in a garage studio with no signal.
FireCard is a record-keeping tool. It does not control or monitor a kiln, and it does not assess glaze toxicity, food safety, or firing safety. A recipe note is a record of what you mixed, not a test result. Follow your kiln manufacturer's instructions for safe operation.
No. FireCard is a record-keeping tool. You type the cone and the segments you programmed, and it never talks to the kiln, the controller, or a thermocouple.
No. A cone measures heatwork, so the temperature at which it bends depends on how fast the kiln climbed at the end. The Orton Ceramic Foundation's chart lists a self-supporting cone 6 at 2232°F when the last 180°F is fired at 108°F an hour, and at 2269°F when that stretch is fired at 270°F an hour. FireCard keeps the cone and the schedule you used side by side, so you can compare firings yourself.
Yes. Each kiln profile is marked electric, gas, or wood, with its capacity, and every test tile carries the atmosphere it was fired in, so reduction tiles stay apart from oxidation tiles when you filter.
On your phone. FireCard has no account and no server, and it works offline.
No. Recipe notes and tile photos are records of what you did. FireCard does not evaluate toxicity, leaching, or durability.
Yes. Every firing is its own card with its own cone, so a cone 04 bisque and the cone 6 glaze firing that follows are simply two cards.
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