This is just a test....

Started working on crystalline glazes this past week.  I decided to try 15 different glazes, thinking that I get lucky with at least one of them.  I mixed up 200 gram batches of each glaze; they all have the same basic ingredients but vary slightly with the amounts.  I added water and painted my test pieces, and let the kiln rip.  I was pretty excited to see the results, and when I first looked in the peep hole and saw some crystals I got really excited.  I was so excited in fact that I pulled all the plugs and cracked the lid, even though the kiln was still at 900 degrees Fahrenheit.  Which isn’t the smartest thing to do with a glaze firing, it could possible cause the glazes to crack or might even crack a pot.  But this was just a test firing and I wasn’t that worried about them cracking.  Here are a few pictures of what came out of the kiln this time.

I sorted the results into three categories, no crystals, few crystals, and good crystals.  It worked out that there were five in each group.  The next step is to take the best five glazes and make big batches of them and start testing them with colorants.  So stay tuned for these crystalline glazes live in Technicolor, or something like that….  

A Kiln by another name would fire just as hot...

The last two weeks haven’t been that interesting just chugging along with those prayer wheels.  This came to a halt when I got to the decorating phase, I just didn’t have the materials I needed to continue.  So I posted a few videos to Facebook with the twist that I actually explain what I’m doing instead of just playing music.  I think I enjoy explaining a lot more, it feels a lot like teaching and I love to teach people about pottery.  So that was everything new until last Friday when I drove up to Paseo Pottery and bought/ordered a kiln!!! and picked up some chemicals to make glazes with.  The kiln and a few of the chemicals have to be shipped to me, but I was able to take home most of the colorants (i.e. Iron ox, manganese diox, Rutile, and Nickel carb).  This means that while I wait for my kiln to arrive I can work on finishing those prayer wheels.  I’m super excited that I will be able to have finished work within a month or two, also excited that I don’t have to use this kiln to try and glaze in anymore.  I will continue to use it for horsehair and raku firings though.  So look for finished work coming in the next month or so, I will keep you up to date on what I’m working on and how things are coming along.  Thanks for visiting!

I have a cunning plan...

So I was off work last week, well Tuesday through Friday, and was able to spend a lot more time in the studio.  That’s why there were so many blog posts so quickly, but now I’m back at work and back to spending only about an hour or so a night in the studio.  So these posts will also slow down, just because I won’t be able to do as much.  Which is okay I’ll just have to make the time spent there count a little more, try to plan what I’m going to do in advance so I don’t spend my hour trying to figure out what to throw or build.  That’s what happened tonight, I went out there without a plan and nothing I tried to throw worked out.  Everything was off center, too heavy, or just collapsed under the guidance of hands that didn’t quite know what they wanted to do.  So now I’m going to spend a little time each day figuring out what I want to do in the studio that night, and what I want to accomplish for the week.  So I’m off to make some kind of plan for tomorrow night so I don’t repeat what happened tonight. Thanks for visiting.

Flatten them, squish'em, squash'em into jelly.....

      Some of you might remember this post (here) where I made my own bats to throw on.  I was pretty happy with them for a while, but I started to notice some things about them that bothered me.  One big one was that the bat pins (the little nubs that hold the bat in place) stuck up about an eighth of an inch.  I know that doesn’t seem like much but when your hands are pressed down on a spinning bat it gets pretty irritating, it also stop you from cutting off larger objects like plates, bowls, and platters smoothly.  I thought I could deal with it; I have a few other bats that I could throw those types of things on so I kept using them.  The second thing that bothered me was that they are made of masonite, which is basically like compressed cardboard.  So when they get wet they tend to swell a little, and then when they dry they warp a little.  I was okay with this, again for a while but when you’re ready to throw and flipping through your bats and cannot find a flat one it gets pretty annoying.  This happened to me the other day, so I thought I would try to flatten all of my masonite bats at once, prompt like.  I soaked them in water to get them nice and pliable, and then stacked a couple of five gallon buckets full of water on top of them to get them nice and compressed, and left them for a day or two to dry.  

The all important close-up.

So now I’m thinking that my problems are solved (well one of them) and my bats will be flat and ready to use when I want.  I take my seat at the wheel and reach for a bat, and the first one I pick up is warped far worse than any I have yet seen.  Luckily it’s just that one, and the next one is pretty flat.  

Now it’s been a few more days and my bats are starting to warp again.  I’m thinking it’s time to invest in some of the higher end plastic bats that never warp, just to save myself the grief that I inflicted upon myself when I decided to make my own bats.

Maybe next time I will use a treated/sealed, and thicker plywood….

A gaggle, a murder, a herd...whatever a bunch of vases.

  Here’s the first and second batch of smallish vases that I’ve thrown.  They range from one and a half to three pounds.  I had to Frankenstein the photo together, so if it looks a little funny that’s why.  I’m going to attempt to get some more variation in my shapes and heights in the next week or so.  I’m also going to start throwing some in sections and assembling them.  That will make it easier to get some decent height with this porcelain, also some shapes that I cannot seem to pull off any other way.  Well back to the studio I go, I have some trimming to do before I go to bed.  Thanks for visiting.