Laid back wood firing

Well we just fired the maiden voyage of the woodie. It went faster than expected and it seemed we spent most of our time trying to hold it back. One of the new ideas for me that was put forward by Donovan Palmquist was to hold the kiln at the beginning of red heat for an extended time. We choose 1400 and held it for 7 hours. This gets the entire mass radiating heat for a finish that was spot on even- Cone 11 everywhere. We held the kiln again at Cone 6 since it was going way to fast. Holding it at 2230 had Cone 11 down everywhere- the old time and temperature theory. Since most of the pots were glazed ware and I had no intention firing too long so it ended up at 28 hours in length. We could have finished in 16. It was just a holding game.