Strange Week

It has been a bit of a strange week, and not just in one way either. The weather has been all over the board lately. From never getting above freezing during the day one day and the next having temps in the 60's or as in the case of tomorrow in the 70's followed with a chance of snow not 18 hours later. This weather is playing merry havoc with my sinuses.

I have found it a definite challenge to actually sit down and throw this past week. I have forced myself to but it has not been as productive as I would have liked. To complicate matters I am still trying to come to grips with this new clay. I do like the texture of the clay when it is all said and done, and I think that I will like the color as well. I have some in the bisque kiln right now so I should know for sure by tomorrow evening. But, and this is a possibly large but, but this clay has several downsides which is making me consider whether or not to buy more of it. To start off with, it does not like to be slipped. I have lost a full one third of the work that I have made over the last couple of weeks. The clay is so open and grainy that it sucks in a lot of water when you slip it and even when I thought it was dry enough it ended up collapsing. I lost all but one of the yarn bowls that I made a week ago to that. The other issue with this clay is that it has to be dried VERY slowly. The yarn bowl that I didn't slip developed a crack down the side during drying, and it was under plastic until after it was leather hard. I also lost almost half of the pancheons that I made this week to
s-cracks. I have never had that many develop cracks in the bottom during drying at one time.

I managed to throw replacement yarn bowls and get them cut this week so now they are going to live under plastic till they are bone dry. I still need to replace the pancheons since they were all part of 4 piece sets.

This is half of them after they were slipped. I did 4 in each of the colors white,black,blue,and green. I will have to fire the ones that have survived as the blue and the green slip look almost alike when they are dry and there was no real logic to the cracking. The white lost all but one while the black hasn't lost any although I suspect that one of them will develop a crack in the firing. Its not just the slipped pieces that are causing me trouble, although that does seem to enhance the problem, but several mugs that I did have developed various cracks as well.

I am not used to clay that has to dry this slowly, my normal clay that I dig myself has never had this kind of issue, it dries at whatever speed I let it, and as a matter of a fact in the summer time I am throwing and trimming in a matter of hours and firing 2 days later, maybe I got spoiled by that and you can believe that I am going to make sure that I have more than enough clay next winter to avoid having to buy in clay again.

I also have been trying a couple of experimental pieces this past week. The first is a chicken roasting pot. It has been several years since I made any dedicated ovenware and I thought that I would try it again. I suspect that I made the floor and walls to thin but I won't know until it is all said and done.

Once it is fired this should be large enough to roast a whole chicken as well as some veg and taters. It is going to be fired to cone 6 and left unglazed. This helps the meat to stay extra juicy and still get the crispy outside.

The other thing that I have been trying is throwing some serving trays. Basically I am opening a piece all the way to the wheel head and then pulling walls that I cut open and lay out flat. Not sure if I am going to like them or not, they are actually more involved than they look like.

I mentioned earlier that the bisque kiln was firing. I am taking advantage of the 70 degree temp tomorrow and firing of a load of stuff, I am running out of space for greenware plus I have a couple of things that I have been wanting to get finished so that I can use them as demo pieces at a couple of local shops. I have got a load of incense burners, as well as a half dozen chalices, some goblets,tea bowls, and a couple of the lidded jars. I also have about 50 test tiles in there so that I can start working on the amber and clear glazes for this new clay. I also want to try out a couple of variations using oxides in the slip glaze that I use.

Kiln firing, keeping warm, and the ingenuity of shoestring potters

I just opened the glaze kiln that finished firing 30 hours ago. Unfortunately I again forgot to get pictures of the packing nor did I get any on of the firing as it was almost completely overnight (at least the exciting parts) and I forgot to grab my tripod from the studio. I have to say I am really very pleased with the way things turned out. I only had one piece that turned out really awful. Functionally it is fine, but it didn't turn out at all like I was hoping it would and will most likely find a home as a doorstop or a window prop somewhere in the house. Other than that everything else came out quite nice and in a couple of cases better than I hoped.

I am especially pleased with the way that the kiln behaved this time around. The firing itself took right under 11 hours, and considering that the overnight low was about 40 degrees during the firing and we had winds gusting up to 25-30 mph I am lucky that it only took that long. For those who don't know, I fire an old electric kiln that I converted to fire gas/wood.

Normally I would fire with wood alone, however firing in the city I have neighbors who are less than thrilled about the amount of smoke that is produced during the firing. With the addition of the gas burners I am able to heat the kiln up to around 700 degrees c before I start stoking with wood, this method produces much less smoke as at this temp the wood burns almost completely with much quicker. This also helps to save on the amount of gas that I use.

This type of kiln, especially on this old, cools very quickly under the best of circumstances. Normally this isn't an issue and in a couple of cases I have found that being able to unload the kiln 8 hours after firing without risk to the pieces was very helpful. On the other hand, when the overnight temperatures are forecast to be below freezing, there is a real risk of damage to pieces that were glaze fired from a very rapid cooling. Hmmmm... what to do, I have to fire as there is a piece that was for an order that is over a month old, hmmm... I GOT IT!

I'll wrap the kiln in pink fiberglass insulation when it is done firing.

Okay so I will be honest, I didn't really expect that this was going to work as well as it did. But I felt that I had to try something and this was what I had handy. Imagine my surprise when 12 hours after the firing was completed I checked the kiln and the outside surface of the kiln was too hot to touch. Now to be fair the I did plan the firing around the fact that the daytime temperature on cooling day was going to be around 54, but it was still breezy during the day so I was expecting the kiln to be much cooler than it was. This morning when I checked it a full 28 hours later it was still 53 degrees inside the kiln. This has never happened to me before and truthfully truly tested my patience as I have never had to wait this long to see inside the kiln.

This was my first look inside the kiln. The vase at 9 o'clock is the one "failure" the rest however came out very nicely and with the exception of one vase that had an ash glaze on it that didn't quite mature and needs to be refired everything else is a keeper.

Tall vase for an order. The browns came out a little darker than I expected but I am happy with it and I hope the customer is as well.

Tomato red tall large bottle. This glaze has always come out differently every single time, this is what it is supposed to look like but honestly I was beginning to think that it was never going to look this way, which is a problem since I have 5 gallons of it.

Large bottle vase with clear glaze over green slip. You can see where the copper in the slip started to flash red from the flames and reduction in the kiln, another first.

A squashed bottle with a hare's fur glaze.

These bowls were used to test out an amber glaze. I am happy with the way that they both turned out, I now have a couple of different choices to use as a replacement for the traditional honey glaze that was used over slipware that contained lead.

All in all I am very happy with the way everything turned out. It was a successful firing from many aspects and I believe that with the insulation I now have a safe way to fire the kiln more often over the winter. I also have a glaze that will do what it has been supposed to do, and a choice of glazes to use over the slipware pots. Well worth the loss of a couple of hours sleep.

Busy couple of days

It has been a busy and productive couple of days. As surprising as it may sound, the kick wheel is really turning out to greatly improve my productivity. I have been banging out pieces with more consistency than I was able to on the little tiger wheel.

Small Pancheon with what will hopefully be black slip, I am trying out something new and as usual I didn't wait for test tiles.

I am officially out of g.p. bowls so I knocked out a bunch of them in less than half the time it usually takes.

The 15 lb cider jug with a handle on it. It is now sitting under plastic waiting to be slipped.

I am trying an experiment with double yarn bowls. Not sure how it is going to work out but I am hopeful.

And here they are with the cutouts and handles

I also managed to get a couple of the standard ones done as well. These will get slipped inside.

I decided that I needed a new coffee cup this morning so this is what I came up with. I think I like it.

Some lidded jars. The third one still needs the knob on the lid trimmed.

I also have decided to do a whole series of medium pancheons. These will get slipped and decorated tomorrow.

And here is a quick video of me throwing one of the standard yarn bowls.

A week of new.

Well it has definitely been a week full of new things. To start things of I found out earlier in the week that I had a credit with the local pottery supply. I had taken a bag of clay back a while ago because it was contaminated by ??? dry crud ???. They had immediately made it right, but apparently the gentleman who owns the clay company told them to refund the whole order. It wasn't much, a hundred pounds, but it was enough so that when I went down to pick up a bag of ball clay so that I could make up slip and they told me I decided that I should get clay for throwing as well.

So I am trying out a new clay. It is from the Laguna Clay Company, and it is VERY red. It is their SB red, and to be honest I was a little surprised at how bright this stuff is. It is a beautiful red/orange color that is really really staining. Seriously, my hands look like they have been using that diy bottle tanning and it doesn't wash out.

I of course had to test it out on the wheel so that I could get a feel for it. I am not sure about it yet, it is grittier than I am used to. And it is stiff, really stiff. I can't throw with it right out of the package, and even after wedging if it sits for more than 5 minutes before I use it, it is stiff again.

So I made some covered jars to test it out. That is the old clay on the right so that I could have a comparison.

I do like the color when its wet though. I know that it probably won't fire to that color but it is nice.

Especially with fresh slip on it.

I really like it with fresh slip.

The other new thing this week and the one that I am really excited about is...

I got a new (to me) kick wheel off of craigslist. It is a Brent model J which retails for about $1500 new. I got it for right around 1/5th that price. It is older and it doesn't have a splash pan but it still in really good shape. Of course I am going to build a splash pan for it, I think something like the ones on the leach treadle wheels but... there was no way that I could wait for that before I threw on it.

I forgot how much I enjoyed throwing on a kick wheel. It is definitely a more.... natural/comfortable/grounded/??? pick one, feeling. Plus it definitely will allow me to throw bigger than my old wheel would. I am not giving up my little tiger wheel however, still going to do my trimming on it.

Also I did get a bisque firing done this week. I didn't manage to get pics of any part of the process but I did get the big vases in there so at least they are not in danger of getting broken easily. Wednesday was forecast to be in the 50s so I decided to load and start the kiln Tuesday night so that most of the cooling sould be done during the day on Wed. I started the kiln on Tuesday night at 11:30 and had planned on being up all night with it so that it was finished around 8 in the morning or so. Well things never go as planned and it ended up taking 13.5 hours to finish out. I think the largest portion of the problem was in the packing. With the tall vases in the kiln there was really no room for anything else so it was fairly loose. I also couldn't put any shelves in there so the heat use wasn't very efficient even after I dampered it down to about an inch. But like I said, they are out of danger and since at least one of them was for an order I do feel better about that. I had originally planned to fire the glaze firing on Friday since it was going to be in the high 60s but they started forecasting high winds for Friday, and the rain didn't actually stop until after midnight so I couldn't get the glazing done before then, coupled to the fact that the kiln took so long to reach temp and would likely have started cooling during the cold part of the night I decided to not take the chance on loosing any of the pieces to rapid cooling. I feel like I made the responsible decision, and perhaps even the right one, but it is still eating at me a bit as well.

Goblets and chalices part 2

As promised here are the pics of the goblets and chalices from yesterday. I was actually pretty happy with them when I got to the shop this morning.

This is another medium sized pancheon that I threw yesterday as well, before it got its slip.

And here are the 2 pieces that are supposed to be yarn bowls, still not sure about them.

I managed to get everything taken care of this morning. I got the goblets trimmed and slipped. They are a little bit bottom heavy but I think that it will be okay, they are going to be drying for over a month anyway.

I really do like how these came out.
I got the chalices assembled,

and a few of them got slip decoration.

These are honestly the first 2 piece chalices that I have made that I actually liked. Fingers crossed that the stems don't twist in the firing.
I got the pancheon slipped and decorated,

Have I mentioned that I am really enjoying this form.
I also got the New Year's jug slipped and decorated and covered back up.

It is going to live under the plastic for the next couple of weeks at least.
Finally here is the video of the first couple of attempts at yesterday's goblets, including the "gag reel" at the end. I will be doing up another one shortly that shows a couple of the more successful attempts.

I am going to be taking it easy for the next couple of days in preparation for the overnight firing on Tuesday. I will let you know how that goes.