Category: Art

I had some fun tonight with my clay. I once again got pissed off at the earthenware because it is just simply stiff if you dont have 2 hours to spend working it over, so I did 1 earthenware piece followed by a terra cotta piece. I was impressed with how well the terra cotta piece turned out, it was a little off at first with its shape, but in the end it was quite smooth and very creamy in appearance. Only mild sanding will need to be done to get rid of a few slurry droplets.

See all images from this session.

Here it is, my first non-pregnant lipped pot, fresh from its glaze firing in the kiln.

All of my other pots of a similar shape have a “bulge” that makes them look kind of strange, this is the first one that has been perfectly centered and avoided such an occurance.

I don’t know that I have ever been as nervous in my time with ceramics as I was on Friday. It was finally time to do some glazing, something which sounds as simple as a trip to Krispy Kreme, but in reality for me was much more strenuous. I think I was more nervous for this firing than my initial firing of the kiln, I guess more was at stake this time. My biggest concern was that something would happen and glaze would end up oozing all over my kiln shelves and into the kiln, or something more drastic, glaze trapping air and something blowing up.
Nothing bad happened during the Cone 06 glaze firing which began at roughly 10PM on Friday, July 1, 2005. The kiln was set for a fast glaze firing, which ramps at about 500° per hour, causing the firing to complete at about 2AM. When the kiln first shut off I began hearing popping sounds from the kiln that were more vibrant than I remember the sound of exploding pottery being described as. I still don’t know what the sound was, but at 3pm this afternoon when the kiln was cool enough to open I was suprised to see that nothing had cracked, dripped, exploded or otherwise caused a problem. My guess is that the sounds were caused by the expansion and contraction of the kiln because of the unusually fast ramp rate.
Anyway, enough babble about my fear of blowing up, I fired 1 terra cotta and 1 stoneware piece with a clear glaze, the other piece in the kiln was a small stoneware piece used for experimenting with color glazes. All pieces came out quite nice. I have taken some pics, but they really don’t show how well the terra cotta piece came out. There are a lot of duplicate images, but they each show something slightly different. Before I put my slightly attentive audience to sleep, here are the pics: http://www.disturbingthoughts.net/gallery/index.php?folder=/Ceramics/20050702/
Enjoy.

Tonight I was spinning away at the wheel when after completing my 3rd piece I realized something: I don’t have nearly enough bats. Why is it that I have my bats in such short supply? I guess I should find an additional method for temporary storage of wet pieces (or finally give in to what my mind has been telling me all along and go for the 5 pack of square bats). I feel so inadequate because of my limited resources availible for temporarily storing my work, and also the lack of a decent place to let my pieces dry, although I suppose my shelf unit in the basement would be a good place, who knows. Well… as you can probably guess, there are pots to announce, so head on over to http://www.disturbingthoughts.net/gallery/index.php?folder=/Ceramics/20050620/ and check them out.
Now its time for me to go to bed if I actually want to not be dead in the morning, peace out my mud bruthas’. (ok, where the hell did THAT come from? LOL)

Here are three of my latest terra cotta clay works. I started from a single large ball of terra cotta (about 8 pounds), started working it, then realized it was a bit clumbsy and broke it in half. The first half became the bowl. During the creation of it I removed quite a bit of excess clay, this became the cup (after reworking the clay that is). After both the bowl and the cup were clear I set to work on the last piece of clay. As a whole the ball of clay became the jar, which is to this point the tallest of any of my works.

Yesterday’s firing went great. The kiln declared Cone 04 at 1947° F after firing for 6 hours, 48 minutes. I opened the kiln about 2 hours ago, and unloaded it, nothing broke and I have verified that the pieces will hold water. Has anyone noticed that the last few blog entries have sounded like scientific reports?
Images coming soon.

The first firing of the kiln was concluded at around 7:00am this morning after the kiln reached a holding temprature of 1944 degrees farenheight. That is about 4 degrees above the normal specification for Cone 04, but I guess thats what the kiln’s “intelligent” controller decided was required for reaching the proper saturation in the time it needed to finish firing, I guess it did its final ramp too quickly and needed to compensate. The stoneware pieces came out bright white and the terra cotta pieces are a standard terra-cotta color. I removed the pieces from the kiln at approximately 85 degrees. A full load has been added to the kiln this time and I am running an new firing for the pieces that DIDN’T go into the kiln last night. I am being a little adventurous at the moment with the kiln, I am ramping a little faster tonight than I did last night. I’m hoping that nothing goes wrong with doing this. Last night I ramped at roughly 197 degrees per hour, tonight I am going for closer to 265 degrees per hour. The total run time for last night was supposed to be about 10 hours, and the kiln reported to me this morning that she took 9 hours, 28 minutes to complete. We shall see how long it takes to run this firing, and whether sounds of exploding stoneware is heard or not, I am hoping for not.

The kiln is up to over 1700° F and rising. There is now an orange glow coming from beneath the lid. I have never really had the whole pyro spirit until now, this is so awesome! Maybe if im lucky I can get this bitch up to Cone 6 fully and go to a white light under the lid. 😀
WHOOOHOOO!!!! FIRE KICKS ASS!

Cone 022 reached! This is the first formal cone level, from 022 we count backward to 01, then we start and 1 and go to 10. That is assuming that the goal is a Cone 10 firing. My goal currently is Cone 04.

My new kiln has arrived and is already up and running. I took a few pics during the early stages of firing (before any formal cone level has been reached). As you can read from the electornic display, the kiln was at 353° F when I took these pics. For the first firing i’m only doing Cone 04, or roughly 1950° F.
Whole kiln, just getting heated up.

The main control panel. This replaces the typical cone-meter and backup pyrometer setup that was previously used. I like this method because it gives better control over the kiln than the older mechanisms, plus there is very little chance of over-firing because there is no relying on a “cone” to melt and fall over and hit the off button.

Front view of the beast, it isn’t pretty, but she is so HOT! (2232° F max)