The Past Three Days...

I have been trying to post this for a while, but have not found the time.  Now I am finally getting around to it, so here is what has happened in the past three days since I started writing this post.

Friday I cleaned up the bisque ware and got everything waxed and ready to glaze.  It is a pretty good load of stuff; a lot of tumblers and whiskey cups, some bowls, some mugs and a few new vases. 

I also had a couple of test ornaments in there.  I used to pit/barrel fire my ornaments but have not been able to get very good color on them.  Thus I made some ornament hangers to fire them with low fire glazes.  The hangers were basically cylinders with kanthal wire strung between the sides.

 

Unfortunately they will both need to be re-fired (or something) since the wire sagged quite a bit and the bottom of the ornaments stuck to the cylinders.  As a result I constructed ornament hangers 2.0. 

This should take care of the sagging wire problem at least.  These will get tested in the next bisque firing. 

Saturday was spent in Halloween endeavors.  I was going to write a bit about all that here, but I think I will save that for a different post later tonight or tomorrow. 

Sunday (after sleeping in for a good spell) I glazed everything and got the kiln loaded and firing.  I have a couple glaze tests in there; just some different clears and a satin to play around with.   I am trying not to be too anxious to pop it open.  It is currently at 650 or so, so I should be able to unload this evening some time. 

Now I have to get stuff ready for a show this weekend.  It is at a smaller college (Southern Illinois College) in Harrisburg, IL.  The spaces (if I remember correctly) are only 5.5 by 10, so I am imagining a big room, foyer, etc just lined with a bunch of tables.   I am going to have to rework my display to fit the space but keep it looking professional.  It bothers me when I go to craft fairs and it looks like vendors just set up a table and threw their wares out there.

Today I am working on a set of shelves that will sit on top of the table.  I will probably take a couple of pedestals as well.  If I have time I will tackle the problem of proper table cloths and a better looking sign.  Of course that will be between unloading and cleaning the new work, taking pictures, inventory and pricing, etc, etc.  I will try to take more pictures of everything and get them up here.  Until then.

-Rob

Glaze fire is go!

I finally got all of the work decorated. I decided to run everything through the bisque this time. Next time I will keep a few pieces back to single fire just to test how it will work. If it works out o.k. I might be able to save myself a considerable amount of time and energy eliminating the first firing.
Here is most of the work decorated, but not yet fired. I had quite a few bowls in this round of work. I also had some new forms; banks, oil lamps spice shakers, knob-and-all, etc. I am very interested to see how they turn out and if they will sell. That is really always what it comes down to, isn't it? I really like making the banks and oval flower baskets...but if they do not sell I will probably not be making very many of them even if I enjoy it.


Yesterday I managed to get everything glazed and loaded, so I was able to run a glaze load through last night. Here are the left overs that did not make it into this firing. I am going to have to throw more next cycle. I think I could probably work it out so I can throw enough to fit everything in one bisque and still fill two glaze loads. Of course that is if I don't single fire.
I am also going to have to throw a wider variety of forms. Like I said, I had a lot of bowls in this cycle which made for a bit of unused space in the kiln. I had a few small items, but not enough to fill all the voids around the bigger items. It looks like there may be more spice shakers in my future.
I am pretty excited to get this stuff unloaded. Aside from the new forms I have in there, I also used new colors of slip. My old slips I mixed using oxides & such. These I mixed using mason stains. I already tested them a while back and was pleased with the color of most of them, but they were lacking something that the oxides had. They were too clean. I will just have to wait and see how these turn out.

Glazing my work is the easiest and fastest part of the process. Since all the decorating is done before firing, glazing just consists of dipping everything in a big bucket of clear. I am trying something new in this load, though. On a few pieces I sprinkled some wood ash over the wet glaze. Now ash glazes are not my favorite, but some ash can do pretty cool things. I am not sure how this topical application will work, but I am anxious to find out.

And last but not least, here is the latest slug. You will have to excuse the picture quality. My wife spilled water on the camera, so it kind of fuzzed out on us for a bit. It is right as rain now, though. You can't really tell from this picture, but this guy is laying down with his back arched.

Kiln temp as of 10 am. It will probably be some time tomorrow before I can get everything out and photographed. I will try to get something up when I do.

Glaze Fire Results

I hadn’t planned on posting on here today, but the weather is less than great, canceling both my roofing plans and my barrel firing plans, so… This morning I did get to unload the glaze firing I did yesterday. I have been having some problems with firing my kiln to cone 6, so this was kind of a test firing.

I never really realized how small my kiln is. I got done unloading and thought, “Wow, there was hardly anything in there!” I knew my kiln wasn’t huge, but man, it is small! Now I’m always going to be self conscious about my kiln size. Actually, between the realization about my limited kiln space and its recent chicanery with glaze firings, this would be a good time to look into hooking up my “new” kiln. (My wife’s cousin recently moved and gave me all of his old pottery equipment, including a kiln and wheel!)


So here are the results. There were a couple of grow pots (planters), some tea bowls, a few mugs and a number of glaze tests. I was fairly pleased with how everything turned out, especially the toasty color of the clear glaze over the tea bowls. The color doesn’t come through too well in this picture, but it is nice…or at least I think so. I still have to go through all the glaze tests, but I think they will yield some good information.

This is one of the mugs that I have been working on. It has a light underglaze wash and clear glaze on it. I have a few more that are textured like this, but I am not sure about finishing them the same way. Would a colored glaze be better? Do I need to do something with the handle? I don’t know. Any comments or suggestions would be more than welcome on this.

And finally, the over firing issue. This load was over fired, but only slightly this time. I set up a witness cone so as I could keep an eye on it throughout the firing, but apparently I didn't watch it quite close enough. After running through the firing schedule for about seven hours the automatic shut off had not dropped on the kiln sitter, but the witness cone was bent so I turned it off. When I unloaded this morning some of the work was slightly warped, but not terribly so. And then there was this…

You can see that the cone is bent slightly more than it should be (at least I think it is), but the bar for the kiln sitter is hardly bent at all! What?! So the question; is there a problem with the kiln sitter or did I somehow get a bad batch of bars? Both puzzling and frustrating.