A kiln reborn

So, the last time you heard from me was about seven months ago.  You’ve got to be asking yourself “David, what have you been doing this whole time”. Well I’ve been having some electrical issues, not only with the kiln but the house as well.  It’s always best to start at the beginning…

When I first hooked up the kiln I thought I would fire it up and see how that puppy purrs.  As soon as it started purring the plug, breaker, and all the wires connecting the kiln to the breaker box and the box to the main breaker started to get hot.  Not just warm but what seemed to me to be dangerously hot.  So I shut it down, and did a little figuring and realized that I bought a 208 volt kiln and I needed a 240 volt kiln.  So I replaced the elements and the company said that was all I needed to do to get back on track.  Once again I fired her up to see what we could do and it happened again.  My next course of action I felt was to replace the wires going to the shop from the main breaker.  I bought a larger gauge wire and ran it through the attic and felt pretty good that that would fix my problem.  But while I was messing with the main breaker I realized that the 100 amp box in the shop was run by a 50 amp breaker in the main box, so that wouldn’t work.  I looked around and was able to pick up some breakers and replace them.  I thought this would work, and it didn’t.  I gave up for a while because I just didn’t know what to do, and I was getting really frustrated.  Then we had one of our old breakers melt, luckily I was here to shut it down before it did any real damage.  We then decided to replace the main breaker and the panel in the shop, hoping that we would solve the kiln problem in the process.  After a couple of weeks and a few wasted vacation days we had our new breakers.  I was sure this would fix my kiln problems, but when I fired up the kiln the breaker still got warm.  I was crushed; I didn’t know what to do.  I started emailing tech support with loads of questions, and perused all the forums that I could find slightly related to kiln electricity and wiring.  After this research I decided to upgrade the wire to the kiln to the next size bigger and up the breaker too.  I also had my dad look at it while it was firing to see if he could see what was wrong.  What he decided was that I was over reacting and I should just let the kiln complete a firing and see what it does.  It was fine; the breaker did get warm but not hot.  My research also revealed that the breakers will get warm with a resistive load, which is what the kiln is.  Now I’ve fired one bisque firing and one crystalline test and nothing bad has happened.  So I’m going to assume that my problems have been solved and not worry about it anymore.  While I’m typing this I’m firing my second bisque load, and next weekend will be another crystalline test firing, this time with color.  It’s only be seven months but the kiln is finally up and running.  We should start seeing finished work in the next couple of weeks, so keep your eyes peeled.

Work II: The Return of WIP…

I thought I’d keep the artistic ball rolling this week so I headed back into the studio to make some new work.  I made some vessels that I have been thinking about for a while; here is a picture of what I threw last weekend. 

I also threw some large bowls last October that have been hanging around the studio so I thought I would put them to use.  I decided to make them into wall plates, so last weekend I threw a foot ring on a few of them.  Here is a picture of one after the foot ring was added, you cannot see it very well but trust me it’s there.

When I went out to the studio today I threw a rim onto the same bowls to give them a little more presence.  Here’s one of them with the rim freshly thrown.

I threw all of the new work (and the bowls) out of Rod’s Bod, a stoneware clay that I love.  It has a lot of iron in it, which caused some beautiful iron spotting with most glazes.  But since I want to add this work to the work I showed you last week I needed a white(ish) surface to draw on.  Since Rod’s Bod turns a nutty light brown when left unglazed I needed to add a slip to turn it white.  I used a slip made from B-Mix (cone 10, another clay I use a lot), which is what I used to make the set of pots that you saw in the last post.  It turns a really nice white, but without all the technical difficulties of a Porcelain clay body.  So I gave these new vessels a coat of B-Mix, let them dry and then gave them another coat.  By the looks of them I will have to let them dry overnight and give them another coat or two tomorrow when I get off of work.  Here is a picture of them after they were slipped, you can see they look whiter, but what you cannot see are the thin spots left from the brush strokes which will be resolved tomorrow (the bowls haven't been slipped yet the rims were still wet). 

I’m hoping that they will be dry enough for Keturah to add handles to them on Sunday.  That way they can start the long, slow drying process so they won’t crack or fall apart on me.

A Working Body

Last month I was finishing a body of work that I had been thinking about for a couple of months.  I’ve been trying to think of a way to make work with the limitations of not being able to glaze my work, our current kilns are not trustworthy enough to do anything but glaze in.  In my last body of work I used markers to touch up and add to the scenes on the pots, I really like how this looks and had wanted to use it again.  So with this new work (and not being able to glaze anything) I decided to go full out and use marker to decorate all the vessels in this series.  I expanded a little bit to include different colored India inks, these I used mostly for the banding lines and for larger areas that needed to be filled.  I made this new work out of a commercial clay body called B-Mix (cone 10), it is a mixture of porcelain and a white stoneware.  This gave me a smooth white surface for the stories I wanted to convey, it also allowed the markers and inks to “pop” off of the surface of the vessels. 

                The actual content of this body started with doodles I used to do when I was in primary school.  I would draw a cave or dungeon type scene with traps and treasures hidden within them.  I would then draw a little stick adventure man to climb, swing, and jump his way through the drawing discovering all the hidden things I had placed.  I had shown Keturah (my wife) how I would draw these when I was a kid and she loved them, she thought they were the funniest thing she had ever seen, and said that it would be a good transition from my last body of work to a new one if I could put them on to some pots.  So I sat down and sketched out some ideas in my (hand-i-dandy) sketch book of what kind of stories I wanted to convey, and then I moved into the studio and threw some forms that I thought would look good if seen from a distant.  I then bisque fired them in our converted gas kilns, and then after some hesitation (I always get nervous before committing pen to paper or in this case pen to vessel) I started drawing onto the forms I had made.  Here are some of the finished pieces:

The drawings evolved from the adventure man traversing caves to Greek style stick figure pieces.  I have always been a huge fan of Greek pottery; I really enjoy the variety of shapes and the wide range of subject matter they portray.  So I made some Greek inspired vessels and gave them some Greek styled stick figure scenes.  Here are a few pictures:

I really enjoy using humor in my work, and the idea of bait and switch.  By that I mean I enjoy giving the viewer something beautiful to look at from afar, while putting enough detail in the scenes to draw the viewer closer to the work.  At which point they realize that that beautiful vessel is decorated with stick figures and scenes from a child’s over active imagination.

Accoutremon

The other day we ordered some items to accessorize our pottery, and 

it came in!  We ordered some honey dippers

 

and some lotion/soap pumps.

We have already made some honey pots and just needed these dippers to complete the look.  Here are a few of our newly adorned honey pots.  Look for them in our Etsy Store!

The soap/lotion pumps will be used in future bottles.  We couldn’t make them in advanced like the honey dippers because we didn’t know what size to make the opening on top.  Now that we do I’ve made a few soap bottles, so now we are waiting to see if I made the openings big enough.  The clay we are using shrinks about fifteen percent from the throwing stage to the finished product.  I’m sure there’s some sort of maths that would help us know what size to make them but I like to fly by the seat of my potters wheel.  So we will see how it goes.  Today was a half day in the studio, we went to pick up more clay from the City, and had some good Pho.  Keturah has a book discussion to go to tonight, but I will be back in the studio after dinner to finish up a few things before calling it a night.  Tomorrow will be a full day in the studio, then we both have classes to go to in the evening.  And Wednesday we are heading down to Dallas to go to the aquarium and hang out with some good friends!