Bowls

A run of bowls.  You cans see the bottom picture has a cylinder, is will become a tea bowl.  All is wet greenware and all needs to dry and be trimmed.

Solstice Firing Results

Results from the soda kiln.  Not great, mainly just ok. The attempt at getting a better clay for flashing was a fail. The reclaim clay still does much much better. So, I don't think I will change what we are doing there and I won't be buying anymore WhiteStone or Bmix-continental.

Here are two pieces Mikki put into the soda firing. This is with the reclaim clay, which clearly does much better in the soda.

Soda for Christmas

So I told folks that at the Community Studio I planned on doing a ^6 Glaze fire by Saturday (which was yesterday). By then I figured we would have enough ware to fill the kiln, and also asked people to mark what must go in for Christmas.  So that was loaded up and fired off. Tomorrow we will be able to open it.

The day before I glazed all of my pieces below, ready for the soda fire.  The day I fired off the kiln I glazed a mug (unexpected sale and christmas gift).  While firing I glazed the rest of my bisque, so at this point I have no greenware and really need time to make more pieces.  The holiday was more crowded with my day job than I expected.

So this morning, I and Jessi rolled wadding and loaded the kiln.  Here it is getting started.  We were firing shorty after 9am.  This is my second firing with this design, and I had fine tuned the firing schedule for Sabrina (the soda kiln).

By 11:30 am the kiln was orange red, and was reading 726*C.  I was still only using the lower burners.  By 12:30 I threw the kiln in reduction and started the side burner as well.

By 1:22pm I was at 1035*C and slowed down the firing to hold.  It wobbled between 1000*C and 1061*C for the next hour.  By 3pm, I opened up the flue to add some power and pushed through to 1091*C very quickly.

In the meantime I prepared the Soda (one of the "hundred of uses" they talk about I guess).  In all, we put in 3# of Soda in the side port in the form of "burritos" and 3# of Salt by spraying in the ports.

This is the water and salt heating up to help it dissolve.

I then checked the peeps, proceeded to burn my self like an idiot.  ^5 had fallen by 3:30pm and we were at 1137*C.  I knew that pretty quickly ^6 would fall as it was bending slightly already.

We opened the flue a bit, so only light reduction. We then added a few burritos through the port. We then closed the flue back to heavy reduction and turned off the side burner. To leave it on was to have flames pushing back too much out of the port.  During this period we would spray.  We would then repeat this process.

While the port was being used it would burn up the soda there and we would clean the sprayer so it would keep working.

If you look, you can see the fog of Soda out the flue on top. This is actually light and nothing like the huge cloud you get when you spray.  This was the end.  I open the flue to an oxidation state, and blasted all the burners for a good 15min.  At that point I shut it all down, sealed it up and left Sabrina to cool.

I do think that we reached ^7 by the end. I did not really back off on the heat while we added soda.  To some degree it was in reduction due to the addition of spraying (water reduction) and we closed the flue a bit, so this was a heavy reduction.  But the fire was high, and then of course at the end we blasted it clean.  This took about 45min or more to complete this stage, so I do think that was enough to get to ^7.  I will see when we open.

A few notes.  In this case I put the pieces I wanted less soda on up top, as naturally Sabrina soda's more heavy at the lower level.  Also, the port I use to measure temp is towards the top.  Now that is important as in many kilns there is a temperature difference top to bottom, especially given the burners are on the bottom. In this case that is about 100*C difference when I measure.

Why use a pyrometer? Well only potters would ask, as the rest of folks don't know about cones. But I use the cone pack inside of ^010, ^5, ^6, ^7 to measure stages for me. But the pyrometer helps me see that I am moving up in temperature (there can be odd moments were you stall, this helps you see this very quickly). It also allows me to see how fast I am moving up (and I do have a specific ramp schedule I am attempting to achieve).

I did not hit the ramp schedule perfectly, but I did hit very close to the ideal I set out. So, the test will of course be in the pieces themselves.

New batch of Greenware

So here is a new batch of greenware, some noodle bowls. They seems to sell well overall.  I am thinking I will fire the white ones in a soda firing, as that white clay was purchased for that purpose.  I believe it will flash nicely, but needs to be tested out.

All of that I hope to fire off before Christmas.

Some collaboration pieces.  Mikki painted this platter, I posted it before.  Here it is glazed.  The bowl below is greenware, with more fish from Mikki.

Randmom Fun Things

What you see below are tools for making glazes and glazing.. yes, the brushes really are for glazes.

I follow this potter on IG. He posted this.. a bit of a nightmare people not being careful and ultimately things melting....

The Struggles of the Holiday Season

So it is the season.  At the community studio of course there is the normal push pull. People are not working as much so there is less work to fire, but there are gifts in process waiting which sets up a problem.  I do think we are doing ok overall and will make it all work.

In the midst of this I am collecting things for a soda firing to fill my own kiln, but have had limited time to make more work which has been very frustrating.  So.... when I had pieces deliberately destroyed it was a problem.

I won't go into it. Short version, a person who is no longer a part of the community studio seemed to believe that despite having his work fired along with everyone else's, he had been singled out by me to not have any of his work fired (ignoring all the bisque and glaze fired done on his work).  He took multiple pieces off of the greenware shelf and smashed them.....

Anyway, moving on. I keep trying sales and the overall sales have told me what I need to be making more of. So I am really needing some time to throw!!!

As with all sales, note the picture is of our booth and reflects my work as well as the work of two others.

And More Drying...

So the bisque is loaded, these teapots are now put together but they are drying and will take a while to get fully dried.  I am headed to a glaze firing on friday or saturday (meaning I must make that Blue Rust Glaze by then) and I will fire off a few of my pieces and the rest of the community studio pile.  I have one bowl that is a replacement piece that will go in there, and finally get shipped out!

Then about one more bisque load, which should knock off my remaining pieces.  I figure possibly another glaze load for the community studio but for me, I will finish off the rest of my pieces in the soda firing.  That will bring us up very tight to christmas.

So below is my platter that is a bit over 13".  Mikki did the painting on this with underglaze. We discussed possible Lavander glaze, made with a small amount of mason stain to a celadon base. This will allow for the underglaze to show through nicely and not cause any odd runs as this will bisque fire with the underglaze to set it in the clay. This was trimmed today (mainly rounded off) and will now dry... slowly....

And here are the two tea pots. Both out of the Whitestone from Laguna. The plan is to soda fire these off.

Waiting on things to dry...

I think enough stuff will be dry I can do a bisque load tomorrow. This would set me up, possibly, to have what I want for soda. I am uncertain with a few gift pieces if I want to soda them or not.  I am feeling super pressured time wise.

Here are a few newly thrown pieces. Not feeling very productive as I try to deal with my house having all kinds of fun expensive problems.

This is a baker for chicken. Think the method of putting a beer can inside the chicken?  So the center section is filled with a liquid and herbs and the bird goes on top!

One of two teapots I threw today.

Things that are drying... that need to hurry up and dry damn it....

Look, Imma tea pot !

So, some odds and ends. This included a few rice bowls, the cup part of a wine glass, and then two full wine glasses.

This is a different clay. It is Whitestone from Laguna.  We think it might do well with flashing in the soda kiln. So, we will see.  I made mugs and two platters.

Now this platter, about 13" wide, will be a collaboration piece. Stay tuned to see fish designs!

And here we go again with the pitcher.  I really need to just devote the time and do a bunch of pitchers and tea pots at once.