KilnTrail

Pottery journal

Every piece, from clay to cone.

KilnTrail keeps a record of each piece on your phone: the clay body, stage photos, how each glaze went on, the firings it came out of, and the test tile beside the finished pot. When a glaze turns out well, you can look back at the recipe, the application notes and the firing record.

$29.99 ONCE · $14.99 A YEAR · $2.99 A MONTH

No account
Backup on every plan
Grams or ounces, °C or °F
10 languages

The Pieces board with columns for thrown, trimmed, bisque, glazed, glaze fired and done

The piece card

Follow each piece through the studio.

Thrown
Trimmed
Bisque
Glazed
Glaze fired
Done

Each piece sits on a board in the column for its stage. Move it to the next stage with a tap and add photos along the way. Thrown and hand-built work both fit, and sold, gifted and broken pieces leave the board without leaving your records.

The finished piece.

Open a done piece and it is all there: stage photos, clay body, each glaze with the method and number of coats, the firings with cone and your schedule, your rating and notes.

Test tile beside the pot.

The tile you fired for that glaze sits next to the finished piece, so you can compare what the glaze did on the tile with what it did on the pot.

The lower half of a piece card: the glaze, two firings with cone and schedule, and the test tile beside the final piece — Test tile vs result: the tile and the finished bowl side by side.

Glaze recipes and test tiles

Scale a glaze recipe to your batch size.

The Iron Red recipe with its test tile, a finished bowl, cone range and notes — Recipe: Iron Red with its tile and a bowl that wears it.

Write a recipe the way you mix it: base materials totalling 100%, with colorants and opacifiers added separately. KilnTrail scales each line to a tenth of a gram, keeps versions as you adjust a recipe, and lets you record test tiles by clay body and cone, each linked to the firing it came out of.

Batch

The Iron Red sample recipe from the screenshots. Change the base weight to scale it. An example, not a recommendation.

Base g

Material	%	Grams
Potash Feldspar	40	400
Silica	20	200
Whiting	15	150
Kaolin	10	100
Talc	15	150
Additions
Red Iron Oxide	10	100
Total	110	1,100

Mix a batch and KilnTrail can deduct it from the materials you have recorded on the shelf. For glaze chemistry, the recipe screen links to Glazy.

The kiln log

Your segments, drawn as a curve.

Record the kiln, the cone, your schedule segments (rate, target, hold) or a program name, the pieces in the load and how long the firing took. The schedule is drawn as a curve, and a photo of the witness cones can go with it. Plan the next firing and get a reminder on the day.

#	Rate °C/h	To °C	Hold
1	150	600	0
2	250	1100	0
3	60	1222	10m
4	-150	980	0

An example Cone 6 glaze firing from the app's sample data, not firing advice: 150 °C/h to 600, 250 °C/h to 1100, 60 °C/h to 1222 with a 10 minute hold, then down at 150 °C/h to 980.

The cone picker shows Orton self-supporting cone temperatures as a reference. KilnTrail does not suggest schedules and does not connect to a kiln.

The Firings list with a planned glaze firing on the 22nd and two past firings with their loads — Firings: the next one planned, the last ones logged.

Also in the app

Materials shelf

Raw materials by weight, with the ones running low listed first.
Sales and gifts

Price, date and where it went, with totals by month in each currency.
Reminders

A day to check a piece is leather hard or to trim the foot, and firing day.
PDFs

A piece card, a recipe card with the scaled batch and its tiles, a firing log and the whole kiln log.
Backup

Every piece, recipe, firing and photo in one file, to restore on another phone.
Your units

Grams or ounces and Celsius or Fahrenheit, with the app in 10 languages.

More screens

Pieces: the board, one column per stage.

Glazes: each recipe shown by its newest test tile.

Batch: a recipe scaled to a 1000 g base.

Firing: a Cone 6 glaze firing with its segments.

How it works

Your records stay on your phone.

There is no account and no sign-in. Back up to one file and restore it on a new phone, on every plan.

What you made stays open.

When a trial or plan ends, every piece, recipe and firing you made stays there to open and edit.

It records, it does not prescribe.

KilnTrail keeps what you enter. Firing schedules, cones, glaze chemistry and kiln safety stay your call.

Pricing

Standard

Up to 30 pieces, 5 glaze recipes and one kiln, with the board, the piece card, firings, reminders and backup. A small banner ad on the Glazes and More tabs, never on the board.

Full access adds

No caps on pieces, recipes or kilns
Test tiles
The materials shelf
Sales and gifts
The PDFs
No ads

$29.99 once

A year: $14.99
A month: $2.99

A 14-day trial is offered in the app. It starts only when you tap it, and no card is asked for.

Questions

Does KilnTrail need an account?

No. Everything stays on your phone and there is no sign-in. To move to a new phone, back up to one file and restore it there. Backup works on every plan.

Does it work for hand-building?

Yes. A piece starts as thrown or hand-built work and moves through trimming, bisque, glazing and glaze firing to done. You can skip a stage that does not apply.

Does it calculate glaze chemistry?

No. KilnTrail stores and scales recipes as you type them. For chemistry such as UMF, the recipe screen links to Glazy.

Can it control or read my kiln?

No. You log each firing yourself: segments, cone, load and the actual time. KilnTrail does not connect to kilns or controllers.

What happens when the trial ends?

Every record you made stays there to open and edit. The standard plan only stops you adding past 30 pieces, 5 recipes and one kiln.

Is there an iPhone version?

KilnTrail is available for Android on Google Play.

Put your next kiln load on the board.

Add a piece, give it a photo, and follow it from clay to the shelf.