Gearing Up for Tomorrow

So tomorrow is the Soda Firing and it is Reclaim Day!!

It is my Soda Kiln, but it is a community firing. And this time there are at least five of us in this firing.  I really am trying to get the members get that this is one of the perks of being a member, we will do various firings.

I am very excited about the test tiles, as I will be testing the typical glazes we use and see what they look like under reduction and soda.

But the prep work for a soda firing is a lot more involved than an electric firing.  This is not just me picking up the work from the studio and bringing it to the kiln.

I made and rolled wadding.  I cleaned the kiln shelves, I made kiln wash.  I then painted the shelves.

Tomorrow I will spray the work with water and dust with ash. Then load the kiln and start the firing.

 This bowl is done with Rutile inside and Malcolm Davis Shino outside. We will see what this does in ^6.

So here is some of the reclaim slaking down and getting ready for tomorrow and the pug mill.  I am not sure who all is actually coming. I hope we get enough help. This will create reclaim clay for the studio. We will sell 25# bags at $10 a bag. This will also be the clay I use.

Given the amount of clay that is broken up and slaked, I am going to need some help breaking it down.

Season is coming...

#FEAR

I don't know. It is going to be the art fair season pretty soon. So we will have to address how we as a community studio are going to participate.  Outside of this, how me and a few friends might show work if the studio doesn't.

I have mixed feelings.  I struggle with the idea of my work being sellable or not. I don't do great sales out of our gallery, but there are also business reasons that come into play.  So I have very mixed feelings about art shows.  It feels like my work being placed on trial.

I do need to gear up and get work done so I can keep up (assuming I sell). And I really would like to make enough to have my pottery break even. Sure it would be nice to actually make a living or at least have this pay like a part time job.  But I am no where near that right now.

Going to NCECA was very worthwhile, part of it was I felt better about some of my work.
We will see what happens.

Proposed Firing Schedule

For those of you that care, I am firing a Soda Reduction Kiln, to ^6

here is the proposed firing schedule:
slow rise to 600*C
Ramp up to 850*C and then start heavy reduction
hold in heavy reduction for one hour
ramp up is 100*C or less per hour

After hour reduction, continue ramp schedule in low reduction
At ^5 (around 1196*C) enter heavy reduction and add the soda
Soda is 3# mixed with 1 Gallon of boiling water.

When ^6 falls (around 1222*C), hold for 30 min, attempt to hold temp.

Cut the heat and seal the kiln, allow the temp to drop to 1025*C
Then down fire, allow slow cool at 80*C drop or less an hour
Once the kiln reaches 800*C, seal the kiln again and crash cool.

The firing will take about 6 to 7 hours. Cooling will take an additional 2 or 3 hours before the final crash cooling. The kiln can let sit overnight.

Kiln Building... current thoughts

So there is this issue I have had with kilns. We planned on building one but the cost was just so far away from what we could do in any reasonable amount of time.  This was before the economy tanked. Now We are living paycheck to paycheck so this really isn't an option at all.
We were looking at a Joe Finch kiln, following his book
http://www.joefinchkilns.co.uk

But this is large and we need a lot of bricks, far more than we could beg and borrow.  I have not given up, but it is an "not now" kiln.  This is really the kiln I really really want us to have. This would be wood and gas.

Now we are talking about a more rectangle design that would allow us to do wood firings.  We need about 137 bricks to make that happen.  It is not too different from the kiln design Steve Booton has made.  He does great work and shows his kiln building on his youtube teaching videos.  He was firing to ^10 with this.
http://www.stevebootonceramics.co.uk

But, there is a Jack Doherty design for a propane fired catenary arch soda kiln.  I don't know if he is still using it but he was firing to ^10 with this.

Now here is the deal... the Doherty Catenary Arch Kiln, it uses a lot of castable rather than actual soft bricks.  Further, he is using propane which is much more acceptable to me.  I need 2 GACO Venturi MR-750 Burners at about $270 a piece. That is the burner I would want for any of these. But that is a cost issue.  I also need some concrete blocks for the base. And i would be good have lay cement to level as the ground level for this.

then there is the bricks again... the Soft Bricks we need are about $5 a brick... x over 100... and then shipping... ya...

but Doherty is using castable and even making his own brick. This, I think we can do. And I think we can do it at a much lower price!
2 parts Fire Clay
2 parts Saw Dust
2 parts Grog
1/2 part Alumina
1/2 part Cement
He then fired the bricks to 1,000*C (about ^05).
If this works... we can slowly build up the amount of bricks we have and work our way up to having enough to do some kiln work.  I still need cash, but not as much.
x

Today's Work

So my day job continues to have its own issues. This continues to be a bigger deal then I want to discuss here.
however, I made plates and some bowls.  I did some slip work with the plates.

Now, remember this is wet.  It will dry to be greenware, but that red is really Red Iron Oxide.  It will fire a very dark brown. The body will fire as a tan, and the white.. well the white will fire even whiter.  So I will use some transparent glaze so all of this shows.  The design in general is inspired by the slip ware, though traditionally that was with red earthenware clay.

Keeping Track...

So this app is only for apple products.  it allows you to use pictures you take, or you can take pictures just for the app.  You can list glaze, clay, dimensions, date fired, selling price, and finally any notes you want to add.

it will allow you to find them by name or picture, so you can use this as a database of your pottery.

So Where Do the Pots go....

Well hopefully to good homes.....

But, our Community Studio is focused on Building Community for our Artists and then teaching ceramics.  Lastly is the issue of selling the ceramics. I say ceramics as I am one of several potters but there are other Ceramic Artists who are doing sculpture and other things.

Because of this, our sales are slow because they are not a priority. We discussed over the course of the summer and into the winter if we wanted to change this.  Our decision was, no. We want to keep our focus on community and teaching as the primary area and sales as secondary.

While I am exploring some additional options for sales, there is the issue that I only have so much time and energy anyway and I work a full time job.

On a FB group "Pottery Geeks", there was a mention of breaking and throwing things that did not meet standard.  While I do this too... there are some pieces that are better labeled "seconds". We have a second sale out of the community studio in April.  I have a few pieces from the last firing that have Flaws. Some had an issue with an experimental glaze that really needs to be used a lot thinner than I realized. So there was some crawling.  I had a platter where a piece of kiln wash seems to have fallen on it, now sealed into the glaze.

but the three largest bowls, with crawling, were given to the Doggz.  The other bowl is one that I rejected due to a bloat and gave it to the doggz already.