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Wednesday, April 24, 2013

With Risk comes Disaster...

Overall, I have had very few pots that died in the kiln. Some cracks yes, but actual kiln death? Not really. I have been very very lucky. Well, not really luck. See the more you control the environment the less likely you have this issue. And Control is based on leverage and knowledge. Well in the Electric kiln there is a lot of control and the firing is done by someone with a lot of experience. Further, tried and tested glazes are used.

Oh I have experimented with glazes, and some ash in there and such, but the risks have been minor. Here in the last Soda Fire, I was quite clear about the risks being taken.  I am only showing a few pots below so you can see the highlights and disasters and what was learned.  For the record, I am only showing my work. Maria and Kuky's pieces were fine!

Here you can see on the right the FAIL of the ash glaze, the recipe needs a serious overhaul. On the left you can see where it actually was working with the Shino...



On the bottom you can barely see the Shino, it's not bad. Ignore that the wadding isn't cleaned up, that is fixable. What I want you to see is the body of the bowl. Yes, this is what the Soda and reduction can do.  The inside is crap, ignore that. This is what can be done in this kiln.


Here the Shino isn't great but really the thing I want to highlite is that a direct drop of soda screwed up the pot. 


You saw the body of this storage jar first, here is the lid. Look at how that glaze broke over the edges. Again, a great example of what CAN happen.


What I learned was that we need to fix the ash glaze, I will test it next time in a less ambitious manner.  We need to not do a direct soda to pot drop, only into the fire with this method or go back to spraying.
I also learned I can fire this kiln by myself !

What this moved me to do?
Test tile all our standard glazes. They are viewed as oxidation/electric ^6 but we need to see what reduction/gas ^6 looks like with them as this can radically change the look. It would be nice to know what the palette is on this.
Also, I want to do more Soda Fire and I want to do more "liner glaze" only, keeping the outside body free for the soda. With this in mind, I think next step is some flashing slip...

Monday, April 22, 2013

Pikachu Said...

So given that I respect what he says, and frankly don't listen to many other people... I listen. Ya so he said I should sell on Etsy... I am fearful, but I opened up an account.  I have not posted anything but I am moving that direction...

Saturday, April 20, 2013

Soda Kiln Adventures...

So bit by bit I am learning to do other things besides throwing. I can make glazes, frankly as a cook that  is way easy. Very little is a new skill if you can bake.
Below you can see my ash glaze. Simon Leach has a traditional (for the leach family) ash glaze that is simply ash and ball clay (50/50).  Now based on my research I believe that both the ash and ball clay will melt enough at a ^6 for us to actually use this glaze at that heat level.  This is the test.

This is made up of ball clay and ash from my wood burning stove as well as washed wood ash that was donated.  We sieved this after it was made to create a smooth glaze, thick as cream. If this does not work I will then start adding small amount of frit to lower the melting temperature until this works.  I have no desire to go off of some ash glaze recipe that has a ton of ingredients, there really is no purpose to this silliness.

Today I ran, with Kuky, the gas soda kiln.  I think at this point I can do this alone. I want to have a go at the glaze kiln and the bisque at least one more time with help before I fire those alone. I need to create better notes about how to use the electric kiln they have. Frankly I have a better grasp of using the old style with the kiln sitter than the fully electronic version.

You can see some pix of the kiln at different stages. For Soda we use Baking Soda.  This time we are using foil filled with soda. We did a hold at ^010 for an hour in reduction, ended reduction until (theoretically) ^6 at which point we were going to add the soda and hold in reduction for an hour.




If you don't know... propane, if left open for a long time, starts to freeze. It is very cold as a gas and this can lead to "stalling". This means less gas comes out. So with a long fire you can have this issue. Solutions vary but without a yoke it really leads to a lot of kicking and running water.  Now the old kiln   sitter is still a part of the inside of this old electric kiln. We put in a ^6 cone in it, and knew that we could at least see from the outside that it had "dropped". Because it is not really attached this does nothing to the kiln, but it allows us to see it. We are now calling this our "blind cone".

There was stalling and using the thermocouple we had hit a solid ^5 but could not get beyond this and the temp dropped. We decided to declare this the top range and added the soda foils at that point. In the past we have sprayed. The glazes were a Shino and the Ash Glaze we created.  These glazes are reduction glazes for ^6. We were not happy we could not get it up any higher and then noticed... the Blind Cone had fallen...

Cone is a measure of "heat work" that is both temp and time verses a simple temp #. We had enough time that we had actually reached ^6.  We counted the time since the soda was added and then after an hour of reduction we cut the heat and sealed the kiln. Thats were it is right now... our surprises waiting...




Working Again...

So I am back working again on projects. I did not throw today but I got other things done. I glazed all of my bisqued pots. I loaded a bisque kiln (top shelf needs more pots before we can fire it though). And the soda kiln, that's about the next post...

So here you can see all the work bisqued, most of it I did not do pix of before.





Here you can see my mother's day gift. This by far is my favorite pot I have ever thrown. I love the shape, the lid fits right and it balanced with the body. It's got a great weight as well.  I keep trying to recreate this!  

I don't worry about my mom seeing this. Very little of my friends and family actually look that this blog, it is mostly people I have never met in person that look at this.  Ok the inside of this pot is a mix of wine red and fuzzy white. The outside is wine read and a  spray of blue fur. Enlarge the pix and you can see the sprayer and the splatter of the the glaze. All of this is 6^











Sunday, April 14, 2013

Recent Additions

I work in spurts, not just with this, but in general.  I am not so sure that most folks around me are even aware how extreme this pattern can be.
I am coming out of a "low work" period.  Here is what I put together today. It's not a lot but I have a lot of things I am aiming to do this week.


What you see below is not a little bowl, but a lid for the storage jar.




A friend bought my blue bowls (part of the pix lost due to my google issue). However, they broke in the mail! Irritated, but I will replace them.

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

A move or two forward

So my goal is to have a fully functioning studio to do ^6 reduction soda fire & earthenware fired pottery. I have sheltered work space, a kickwheel, a slab roller, odds and ends of typical tools. I have a "shell" of a kiln as well.

Next, I have a pug mill on its way. This summer I am doing a workshop on ^6 soda firing which will include modifying the electric kiln shell into a gas kiln for soda.

I am three years off of being able to work 30 hrs a week, rather than the current 50+ hours I currently work. (Used to be 60+, ugh).

I don't plan on making a living off of my pottery, but want to make enough for it to be self sustaining. I sold three cups, my first sales, equaling $15. It is something.

Finally I understand how my blog lost all the photos of my work.  I cannot replace them but i can insure it does not happen again.

Plenty of places where life is almost unbearable, but this is not one of them.