Fun With Sodium Vapor and Other Fiery Tales

I was recently down in Medicine Hat for a 10 day atmospheric firing workshop with Robin Dupont. The goal of the workshop was to fire the salt, the soda and the wood kiln in those 10 days as well as make enough work (on top of what we initially brought with us) to fill them. I left Calgary at about 2:30 pm after picking up one last box of clay. The trip was fairly uneventful, except for the dramatic prairie storm that was on the horizon. I was driving straight towards this huge, towering wall of storm cloud for about an hour and a half before I actually caught up to it, and then the highway veered off to the south and I essentially skirted the storm for most of the way, although I did get a bit wet. This shot is an attempt to capture the electric yellow canola fields against the stormy black backdrop.

The workshop began on Friday and we were decorating and glazing pots right away to fill the salt kiln.

Robin loading the salt kiln

While the salt kiln was firing/cooling, we were all in the studio madly making more pots. That being said, I did take time out to just relax. I was outside the kiln pad when I saw this little guy. Not your regular hare, more a peter cotton tail bunny. It was quite young and there were a whole bunch of them all over the place, hanging out in the tomato patch, under piles of scrap wood, etc.

After some debate as to schedule and when to fire, we began loading the wood kiln. We were pushed off schedule a bit because of a massive thunderstorm that knocked out the Blauww gas kiln that was full of our pots getting bisque fired, but a quick reset the next morning to finish the bisque had us back on track pretty quickly. We ended up having so much work that we ended up loading the salt again too. This shot is of the throat arch chamber that is a "secret" chamber in between the firebox and the main chamber. The pots here will get a ton of heat and ash, so fingers crossed they come out ok.

This is the main chamber and the pots here will get less ash deposited on them.

This isn't the actual storm, but it was a precursor to the one that knocked the gas kiln out.

Once the wood kiln was loaded, we fired it up at around 10 pm on Wednesday night. I was on stoking shift from midnight to 6am Thursday morning. This was a fairly easy shift, just keeping the fire going and spreading the coal bed around, making sure not to chuck wood into the pots that were about 2 feet away from the action.

After that shift I went to bed for about 4 hours and came back to the studio to finish glazing pots for the soda and salt kilns and to start the loading process. Somewhere around 10pm it became apparent that there was a problem. We couldn't get anyone to do the midnight to 6am shift on Thursday night/Friday morning, but even though I had really only had 4 hours of sleep in the last 24 hours, I volunteered. That was actually fun. I was on shift with Michelle, a potter from Ft. McMurray. She chopped and split wood and I stoked. We were firing with cotton wood, not the easiest wood to fire with as it is a horrible wood to chop and it burns so fast you are constantly stuffing the firebox full of logs. I did get a really good feel for how that kiln fires. I was even able to tell by the sound it was making as to when temperature would start to climb, when it needed wood, when to fill the firebox etc. The heat was insane, and I lost about a gallon of sweat. When we were nearing our goal temperature, we began spraying in about 2 lbs of soda into the main chamber.

I missed most of that morning and afternoon as I was sleeping, but I came back around 3 to witness the addition of the salt and soda. We were really concerned that the draw rings were not showing much glaze and so in an attempt to get a better read on what was going on, Robin decided to take a little cup off the bag wall that was able to fit through the port. I think we ended up adding another 3 or 4 lbs to the kiln. After we reached temp and we shut it off, Robin then perfomed a very slow cool down at around 1800F by keeping one burner on low to prevent the kiln from dropping in temperature too fast until it got to about 1400F (I'm working from memory here, so I might be off on my temps)

These are a few results from the kilns: Wood fired porcelain flask

Wood fired stoneware pitcher fired in the secret chamber. It looks really crusty, and it is, but I have cleaned and scrubbed most of the crud off of it. I still need to grind a few chunky rough spots off and smooth the handle, but it should be pretty good.

One of my favs. This cup came out of the soda kiln and is a really good example of what the slow cooling at the end achieved. It matted the surface and promoted crystal growth. In the sunlight, this surface is so amazing. There are rainbows of colour and the surface feels soft and silky. I had a few good pots out of the first salt, but only 2 cups made it into the 2nd salt and I guess I did not take any good pics of those pots, so we'll wait until I clean them up and get them ready to take to market.

My drive back home:

Early Birthday Present To Me

I ordered this a while ago and it arrived at Ceramics Canada yesterday. It is a gas conversion kit that will turn a 10cu.ft electric kiln body into a propane fired kiln with the goal of firing it in either a soda or salt atmosphere. I'm guessing soda will be the end choice as salt pretty much melts soft fire brick, but I might opt to prepare the bricks with a refractory coating like ITC 100 and that should effectively prevent salt eating away the bricks.

Just a Peek

Last weekend was the May long weekend. As many silly people trekked out on the first camping weekend of the summer, I was ensconced in the studio mixing glazes and loading kilns. It turns out that I was the wisest one. It rained all weekend in town and snowed several feet in the mountains. These are just a couple quick shots of the bisque kiln all loaded up and ready to fire and the resulting glaze kiln that I loaded on Monday. It was still at 650 F so I was only able to take a quick peek in to take the photo.

Another new body

I picked up a new ^6 clay body on the weekend. It is black and it fires black, should be interresting. It was a pleasure to throw, very smooth and very plastic. I was able to achieve height and width without much difficulty too. I guess it is not recommended for heating in the microwave as it contains black iron oxide. I guess I wont be making mugs out of it, but I did get a casserole, 6 coin banks, 1 large bowl and a pitcher thrown out of just over half a box. I will trim tomorrow night, we'll see how it goes.

Imperfection

Wow, it has been almost 2 months since my last post. My only excuse is that life got busy. I had another leak in my condo last week that was completely the fault of shoddy workmanship. the solder at the connection to the shower diverter starter leaking due to a plumber that just did not care enough. That was taken care of last week, but I spend most of it at my parent's house while the fans were blowing in my unit to dry out the wall and the floor. There is an area about 2x3 feet that has a bit of a bow in it. I am not sure if I should get this "fixed", as it is engineered hardwood that is all glued together. once you cut bits out of it, it ruins the integrity of the floor. I can only tell that the bow is there because I know that there was a leak and where to look for it... Now, as for pottery, it has been so warm and muggy here in Calgary that the thought of throwing anything while kilns are cooling and the temp outside has been 28 plus degrees, has been less than tempting. I went in yesterday to get a few things done though. It was much cooler and way less sweaty. I began with mugs and then moved on to a few bowls. These were poked and prodded into submission by a couple of new texture ribs and bits of a mug that did not survive. I just pulled wads off the lump of dead mug and stuck them on the textured bowl. They are not my normal, that's for sure. I love texture, I am just not good at that spontaneous, fresh look. I need to practice a bit more for them to just spring forth without much prodding.

Catching up

The Fairview Studios Spring Pottery sale is over for another year and it looks like we may be in for a change of venue for the next fall sale, so stay tuned for more info to come shortly. Anyway, now that the craziness of the sale is over, I can concentrate on pots. As you can see, I have been up to a whole lot of carving and scratching, and there is more than what you see here. I have even been messing around with slip inlay, or mishima as well as making a whole load of large bowls and platters. Finally, mug handles. They have always been the bane of my existence. I used to hate making them, but not so much now. I am however, always on the search for that "perfect" handle. I think I like these ones. they are substantial, you can't mistake them for anything else. I think Mick Casson said something about how your handles should always make themselves known. That they shouldn't be an afterthought. I agree that wimpy handles that just hang onto the pot like a piece of lint are horrible. Handles should be HANDLES and as that is probably the area that most hands will touch and feel, a well made handle is almost priceless. I love a pulled handle the best, to me they feel like they belong in the hand. Sharp edges are not my thing, thin strappy handles are not my thing, but a lovely pulled handle is something else. I could hold a mug and stroke the handle all day long until I could identify it blindfolded.

Take it to the bank

I posted some banks that I was in the process of making a little while ago, but then did not get the finished result posted. Here is one bird bank and the octopi bank that I made for my nephew. The rest will follow as I get them glazed and photographed.

Running out of time

It's been a while since my last post, so here is a quick update. As you can see from the picture above, I have some "new to me" modular display shelves. My friend Susan offered this system to me for free, as it was just gathering dust in her garage. I took her up on the offer and loaded my car with a ton of shelves and uprights. I put up this 7' section last week so that I could take pictures for a sale application. There are many more sections to this, and all of various heights, but I think this will work for application purposes. I have since installed some LED lights on the underside of a few of the shelves as well as a few clip on goose neck LED lights to illuminate the pots. I ordered that banner a while ago and I think it will work just fine with this display. Of course it will not be attached to the shelves, but hung in front of the table at the sale (assuming I am accepted that is). My next task is to take good quality pictures of a few pots, but first I needed to find a battery charger for my camera battery. The original charger was lost in the flood and I have since tried a couple of times to find one that will replace it, but apparently it is not so easy to find an actual Nikon charger without buying a whole new camera. I purchased a universal charger a while ago but it failed after a while, as did the replacement I got. Now I have a different one that seems to be doing the job. We'll see how long it lasts. I also had to re fire a glaze load as it was seriously under fired when an element died mid fire. There were a lot of good pots in there, so I am hoping that everything works out and doesn't just get worse. I will need these for the picture taking mentioned above. I borrowed a photo cube from a friend of mine a little while ago and I have finally gotten around to testing it out. I was only using my iphone for these shots and the lighting was less than optimal, but still OK results. 

Looks like my weekend will be filled with working, potting, making a family dinner (that's my fault, I offered), more potting and hopefully getting some more pictures taken. I need to get that application off before the end of the month. I just looked at the calendar and YIKES, May is only 2 weeks away.

Pots

I have been working on a few miscellaneous items in the studio. I almost destroyed this pitcher while trimming. I trim them the right way up and then roll the base on a table to develop the "foot" and just smooth the bottom. I guess I trimmed it a tad thin in one spot and while rolling the bottom, it started to bulge out at that thin spot. Upon closer examination, it was not so much thin, as just too damp to support the downward pressure while rolling. I coaxed it back into shape though and managed to get a decent handle attached. I threw some tall mugs, a couple of coffee pour overs to test how fluting would work on the inside to aid the brew. I am not really sure that these channels are necessary, but the internet says so, so it must be true. I was also asked to make a large piggy bank for my nephew and since I already had money banks on my mind, I jumped right in and threw a half dozen or so of various sizes and shapes. I did one traditional pig, but then thought that was too ordinary. I had been thinking of a conical, hut shaped bank with various animal sculptures on top and while discussing ideas with my sister, the idea of an octopus came up. She had no idea what I would do, and so after a few birds, I made this 8 tentacled money bank. I hope it works.

Loaded to the gills

Busy doesn't even begin to describe the studio last night. I got there at 5:20 pm and immediately began unloading my shelves of all of the green ware that I have been stockpiling over the last couple of months in order to begin loading up a bisque kiln. The first picture shows everything that I had, but there were a few pieces that did not make it in. Not to worry, there will be another bisque in about a month. The rest of the images show the bottom, middle and top layers. As you can see, it is loaded really tight. This kiln will fire off tonight and will be ready for me to begin the glaze prep on Friday. If I can get my hands on a couple of large buckets, I will also mix up the new Plainsman clear base that is so nice on the Polar Ice. I will also mix up some smaller buckets of the same clear base but will tint each with violet, pansy purple, tangerine and yellow Mason stains. Fingers are crossed that nothing cracks.

When in doubt, make mugs

Since you can never have too many mugs, I tend to always fall back on them when I just can't decide what to do next.

I got these handles attached on Friday night and now I am just waiting for them to dry out completely before I slather them in terra sigillata for another round of carpel tunnel inducing sgrafitto. I really need to get a bisque load fired, but my plans were thwarted when all the student work beat me to it and now I will have to wait until this Friday to fire. Perhaps that was for the best. It is a long weekend coming, so I can spend more time with glazing instead of rushing it, like I usually do.

A weekends worth of work and other stuff

I was at the studio on Friday night for 4 hours or so. I trimmed and attached handles to a bunch of serving/baking dishes as well as carved this somewhat creepy looking "man in the moon" platter.

I took the day off on Saturday, but was back in the studio on Sunday for 8 hours where I threw 15 mugs and then spent the day carving bowls and plates
 

Here is a plate and a bowl before, during and after carving