A Horse with no Mane

Keturah convinced me to throw some pots so we could do a horse hair firing.  So I threw a few 1 and 2 pound forms, it ended up being about 50 or so pots, 25 of each weight. 

Here are a few of the 2 pounders.

 

After I trimmed them I allowed them to get bone dry, and then rubbed them down with some steel wool to smooth out the rough edges.  I then rubbed them down one at a time with vegetable oil, and then burnished them with the back end of a spoon.  Here are a couple of pictures of the burnishing one static and one action shot.

 

Here’s a group shot of the first batch freshly burnished, you can see our kitchen light reflecting off of the surface of the pots.

 

Here’s a close up of one of the vases.

I then loaded the kiln to the brim with the pots, and fired the kiln up to around cone 010 (1657 f, 902 c), and then let it cool down to about 1100 f.  We then set up a station on the other kiln with a lazy susan, some kiln shelves, and a piece of fire blanket.  After the kiln reached 1100 f we began to take the pots out one by one and lay the horse hair on them, and allowed the hair burn and sizzle on the surface.

  

Here are a few photos of the hair being burned on the surface of the pots.

  

A group shot soon after we finished the last one.

  

A group shot of the pots after we washed them off.

  

After the pots dried we took some wax and polished the burnished surface to bring back some of the shine lost during the firing.  It ended up being about 23 pots that we finished this time around.

Here are a few shots of individual pots, look for these on our Etsy site in a couple of weeks.

Return of the Living Kiln

This week I’ve also been working on our other little kiln; this one is still set up as a down draft.  I took off about half the thickness of the soft brick on the walls in hopes that this will allow more airflow while firing which should allow the fuel to combust more efficiently and we might be able to reach much higher temperatures.  This is exciting because we might be able to glaze some work that has been sitting around.  I’m going to test what temperatures I can get with this kiln and the properly working burners, and then see what kinds of glazes we can make for that temperature range.

I’m also working on some large bowls that came out a few firings ago:

 

I started banding these bowls:

And next I will add some designs around the rims and a nice picture in the middle.  My idea for these bowls is to hang them on the wall, so I threw a catch on the back side so it will sit on a nail.  We’ll see how that works, but I think they will look nice hanging on a wall.

Major Burn…

I’ve wanted to get a new burner for our little propane kiln, because one of ours doesn’t work properly.  It puts out a reduced flame, meaning a very sluggish flame that puts out more smoke than heat.  So the other day I was going to order some fire blanket and a pair of raku tongs for a project Keturah thought of.  So I thought I would go ahead and buy a burner at the same time, figuring it would help the kiln fire faster and more evenly.  So I picked up a small venturi burner designed for burning liquid propane.  When I finally got the package, here’s a picture of what we received:

 

I wanted to test out the new burner so I put what I had in the kiln and started a bisque firing.  I started by placing a small propane torch on a five foot cord in the kiln and turned it on low for about an hour to preheat the work.  Then I add one of the venturi burners on low and remove the small torch, I leave it this way for a half hour and then I usually add the second burner.  When I went to add the second (new) burner it was doing the same thing the old burner was, a slow, reduced flame, after much nashing of teeth I started to think of what the problem could be.  I figured that there might be a clog in the line reducing the flow of gas, so I went to buy a new hose.  If it wasn’t the hose my next guess would have been the pressure regulator, but when I hooked up the new hose and lit the burner it burst to life with a satisfying growl.  So now I believe I have three working venturi burners, I still need to test the old burner, but I think that it will work just fine now that the hose has been replaced.  Once I added the second burner to the kiln it finished in record time.  It usually takes about 6 hours to fire this little kiln to bisque temperature (1850f/1010c) which is a respectable time and one I’m used to with electric kilns.  But this time with both burners working properly it only took about four hours!  So that’s pretty cool, I’m really excited to have a properly working kiln, now to make some new work to  put into it…