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:

What was old is new again

I used to make fancy teapots. This was back when the studio had a 40 cu.ft. gas kiln where size was not as much of an issue as firing in a 10 cu.ft. electric kiln. When we moved studios and changed how we fire, I stopped making these whimsical pots. Now I am booked for a 10 day atmospheric firing workshop at Medalta in July and that was the perfect opportunity for me to bust out the ^10 clay and make these forms again. I am, hopefully, a better potter than I was 8 years ago and I have been far enough removed from the form for a while now that it is almost new for me and I hope I am making better decisions regarding the assembly and perhaps not as constrained by what I thought I knew, or what I thought was "the right way" to do things. So there may be a lot more whimsy to come...

Catching up in the studio

On top of what has been going on at my condo, I have been busily beavering away in the studio. Here is a quick rundown of some of what has been going on since my last glazing frenzy

here are some of the pots from that last glaze marathon

 

This is a cup and saucer for a potential project, possibly more to follow on that, we'll see.

 

Because I never make coffee pots, I thought I would change that

 

Must have teapots 

 

More scratching as always

 

White on white scratching, front and back

That's it for now.

Glazed and loaded

This past weekend was a long weekend and I managed to get pretty much everything from the last bisque load into 2 kilns. I spent a bit more time on the glazing than I normally do, and it took me from Friday to Sunday to get it all done. I cleaned pots and waxed feet on Friday night. Saturday was spent glazing the interiors of mugs and bowls and then waxing those interiors so I could glaze the outsides without making a huge mess of the whole pot. I then finished spraying and dipping the outsides of everything and began loading. As I knew it was going to take more than 1 kiln, I tried to get an even distribution of small vs large pots in both kilns. It worked. The first kiln fired off without a hitch and was cooling all day yesterday. The 2nd kiln began firing around 2:00 on Monday and will hopefully be cool enough to have a peek at tonight. These pictures represent the "controlled chaos" of my glazing methods. The swearing was minimal, but I did take a few ibuprofen's when it was all done. My hip cant take that much standing on concrete.

In even more exciting to me and probably boring to you news, apparently the engineered hardwood was being installed on the weekend in my condo. Next come the kitchen cabinets I guess and then I might be able to move in. Waiting for an updated timeline on that. so it was a good weekend. We'll see how Shrodinger's cat (aka the pots in the kilns) did when I get to the studio tonight.

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.

New porcelain and glaze

Last night I opened up the glaze kiln that I fired off on Sunday. It was pretty much full of tests, so I was nervous to say the least. There was a wack of mugs in the new re formulated polar ice body. I had also tested the new Plainsman stoneware clear base glaze. I made a 1000g batch of the clear using 4% Mason Turquoise stain and then a 1500g batch of just straight clear. After all these years of putting it off, I finally got around to mixing up some of Stephen Hill's cone 6 Strontium Crystal Magic (cool version). I sprayed it on all of the mugs and dipped it on most of the rest of everything else. It is more of an enhancer than a good glaze by itself, so I sprayed and dipped a variety of our studio glazes over top of it. I knew that it would make things runny, but wondered just how runny, as the ~5% lithium carb would act to make things a bit matte. I also sprayed the plainsman clear on about 75 or so Christmas tree decorations/gift tags that I made out of the non plastic polar ice version. I am thinking of next year, as I realize that they are a bit late for 2014. Everything came out great. I think a mug kissed the spout of a teapot, so a little grinding and re firing will be required, but other than that, it was all more than I could hope for. I had visions of lakes of glaze coating my brand new kiln shelf, but no, it was all perfect. This is a picture of one of the mugs glazed in the Plainsman clear base on the inside and the bottom 1/3rd on the outside with the Crystal Magic sprayed on the top half and then a blue hare's fur glaze applied on the top 2/3rds. The second image is just a close up of the handle showing how much it can indeed run. Although you cant tell in these images, this porcelain is still very translucent, even with the darker glaze on the outside.

Pots waiting for the kiln

This week blew right on by. Last weekend was a long one so I took advantage and threw, made glaze, fired a bisque and then a glaze. As usual, I have photos of the pots I have waiting, but none of the finished work. Maybe I will take them tonight. I need to get a batch of pots down to Galleria on Saturday, so tonight is the only option for picture taking. This is an arty shot of a bowl and a casserole with various other pots in the background

These 2 pics are of a lamp base I am working on. Fish seem to be my theme lately...wonder why that is...

On a not pottery note, I met with the contractor yesterday afternoon to walk through my condo to make sure everything looks ok in terms of wall locations and to discuss the kitchen. Nothing was left of it when they got there, so I had to let them know what it should look like and then any changes that I would like to see happen. I really want a pantry, and I hated the peninsula/island so instead I am putting the pantry where the peninsula started and then I will buy a counter top height table with drop down leaves in that space. It will act as a counter as well as an eating area that actually functions. I asked the "when" question as well. He says that there is a 14 week timeline that will begin as soon as they pass the last inspection before drywall starts. So it could be 15-16 weeks. Possibly a move back date 1 week before the 1 year anniversary of the flood. And that's all I know for now.

So close, but still so very far away

It is almost 8 months since the flood, and itt will be exactly 10 months since I was told to evacuate my condo on April 20th. I had a meeting this morning regarding the rebuild stage and although I was not given an exact timeline, it has been estimated that it will take 3 months from Feb 3^rd before we will get occupancy for the units that were destroyed. So I was a little off on my Easter guestimate, but notby much. If all things go as planned, with no supply hiccups, or subtrade shortages/difficulties, I might be back by May 3^rd. My fingers are crossed, but I am not holding my breath. Once the dry walling starts (possibly next week if inspections are ok for the fire stopping work that needs to be done), that would only take a couple of days apparently. Then we will begin meeting with the contractor to discuss finishings etc. The thing that might tip me over the edge will be the 7am weekly meetings with the contractor and the owners. I don’t get out of bed sometimes until 7:30 am. That is going to be tough, but I will just have to suck it up.

On the pottery front, I have bisqued round one for the galleries, but I still need to glaze. I am in the middle of getting work ready for the second bisque firing and it will have large bowls, platters, casseroles etc in it. I threw some really lovely 7-8lb bowls over the last week, as well as some large 5-6lb platters and a couple more teapots, ‘cause you just can’t have too many teapots in my opinion.

No pottery pics today, so here is a puppy pic…

Getting Ready for the Fairview Pottery Sale...

The craft sale season is in full swing and the Fairview Studios Pottery Sale is swiftly approaching. I will be there with all of my pots this Saturday (Nov 23^rd) from 9am to Noon. The Christmas sale is, as always, a unique event and a good study in human behavior. The lineup starts to form somewhere around 8am. The well seasoned customers who have been to our little sale before know to bring their own bags, boxes, carry alls etc. and they all rush in to the hall upon opening like demented lemmings rushing to the cliff’s edge. Nobody shoves or pushes (we are Canadian after all), but there is a determinedness in their eyes to get the biggest, the bestest, or most fantabulous pot ever. They grab the first few po

ts that catch their eye and then hem and haw over their selections as they cruise the rest of the tables, setting pots down, picking new fav’s up in their stead, or just going straight to the cash tables without second guessing themselves.

There are also 2 distinct types of people who attend these sales, at least that I have noticed anyway. There is the person who wants something very unique and one of a kind, and then there is the person who brings a ruler and lines up all the mugs in a row to pick out the mugs that are not all the same height. These same people may also bring along paint chips and fabric swatches to ensure that their new purchase matches the paint on their walls, or the fabric on their furniture etc.

But whether you are a matcher or a mixer, we have pretty much everything you could want.

Behind the scenes is just as interesting, albeit unobservable to the non potter. Starting around the 1^st of November, there is a mad rush to get as much work fired as is humanly possible (or is that humanely – Dave would think its inhumane to have him work so hard) Pretty much every day people are asking if there will be another glaze firing, or another bisque, or if we think there will be enough time to throw today and get it done for the sale. I even have this insane urge to try to produce work right up to the last second. Granted I have to bob and weave around student firings. I can’t interfere with those firings by jumping in with my work. So last night (Tuesday), I loaded a bisque. I know there is no possible way that I can get that work glazed and fired before Saturday morning, but I was mulling the possibility over in my mind last night. If I go to the studio and unload really hot bisque, I could do a marathon glaze session on Wednesday night and load a glaze to be unloaded Friday, priced and then packed. Doubtful to say the least. I have heard a story or 2 of flaming pots in the back of cars on the way to sales. Not something I want to experience first hand.The second best scenario is that I spend a bit of time on Sunday to glaze at a leisurely pace and have it ready for the Moe Shelly Craft Sale on December 1^st at the Bamboo Lounge. This is actually the best option. When I rush, I make mistakes, or break stuff. That is always bad.

Here is a non sale related tip: When someone gives you a ginormous tub of Cornish stone, don’t leave it in your car for a week. I opened my hatch the other day to discover that the bucket had tipped over and dumped about 3 pounds of pale blue grey Cornish stone powder all over. I did manage to get most of it back in the bucket, but I will need to vacuum the rest out at some point. I took the Cornish stone because it is the real deal. We can’t get this anymore. The replacement material did almost the same things, but then there was a replacement to the replacement and it does not do the same thing, at all.

It's My Birthday...

I can only hope that this 42nd year is better than the last. Not that the past year was all that bad, just the last month of it.

I am not doing anything special for it, just going to go make some pots tonight and possibly glaze some with the new spray booth. I need to finish making pots for the salt firing in August, so that is top of the list. But I also need to glaze some pots to put into the gallery. I also have some low temp porcelain that I need to use up and fire. I may do that with the bisque. They fire to 04 so I might just fire the next bisque load a little hotter. It burns out the organics a bit more, esp with the ^5Bmix that occasionally bloats. I think it also leads to a nicer glaze surface. I might even try to bug out of work a bit early today to get to the studio a bit earlier. We'll see how the afternoon goes.

Pass the Salt Please!

Well, we had our open house this past Saturday and considering that we only relied on word of mouth, social media and a free listing in Swerve, we were pretty successful. I can't say for certain how many people showed up, but we had left over tea bowls and I only fired 23 of them. We did manage to get several people to consider signing up for classes, and since that was the whole point of this exercise, I would have to say it was a success. There were a few of us throwing, trimming and glazing pots. I threw a large vase in 3 sections as well as a tea pot. I was also firing the raku kiln, so that kept me pretty busy.

I have also scheduled another trip down to Medicine Hat to fire the salt and soda kilns. A fellow potter/instructor from the studio and I are going to head down near the end of August. I have a feeling that firing atmospheric kilns is somewhat akin to child birth (from what I have heard as I do not have first hand experience in that particular area) in that you quickly forget the pain of the event and are more than willing to take on the challenge again. I do remember the “pain” of the marathon glazing session, and the tears of joy/anguish when unloading, but am more than willing to give it as many goes as possible. This time we are going to head down the afternoon before after I get off work and get up bright an early to get all the deco done in a more civilized manner, which would allow us to finish loading well before 11pm (i hope). When I was down there in April, Susan and I almost killed ourselves trying to get it all done, but we did take in a bit of the farmers market that the Medalta Museum puts on every Thursday. We bought a couple of curry meat pies for dinner. I am not sure if it was the hunger and exhaustion, of if they really did taste that good. Either way, they were yummy. So was the mini saskatoon pie that I scarfed down. I am looking forward to partaking of the pies again.

Always learning, sometimes the hard way.

I spent the past weekend, from Thursday to Sunday, firing the salt and soda kilns at Medalta. I have posted a few pictures of the fired results and there will be more to follow, but I am going to wait for my new light box to arrive before I do. Anyway, there were a few things that I learned this weekend. First, we needed to introduce more soda into the soda kiln. Second, we needed to pack the soda kiln a little more loosely. Third, the salt kiln seems to fire very evenly but slower than the soda kiln. Fourth, we don't think many people drink wine in Medicine Hat. We did however pick up a very nice malbec at the Co-op liquor store (the lady there doesn't drink wine, she only reads the labels, so no help there unless you can't read, then she's your gal. Fifthly, I personally discovered that if you lean in too close when looking into the peeps, your eyebrows, eyelashes and the hair surrounding your face, will singe completely off. I lost half the length of my lashes, trimmed my brows, and now have a fringe of hair no longer than a centimetre at my hair line.

A few pots from Medicine Hat

The firing at Medalta was far from perfect but there were some pots that came pretty darned close. I managed to shoot a few good quality pictures before I came home and here they are. Overall I would say 1/3 crap, 1/3 good and 1/3 excellent.

Getting Ready for Salt

I have been throwing cone 10 clay almost exclusively since the end of December in preparation for my upcoming trip to Medalta in April to fire off their salt and soda kilns. I have made a lot of stuff in that time, but I am in that place right now where I don't know if I have made enough, or if I have made too much. Each kiln is 20cu feet and I am splitting the firing with my friend Susan (aka Sooooozin). So I have a full 20cu feet to fill, plus all the extras like on bag walls, the space under the bottom shelves etc. The end of my last bag of clay was actually where I started to make really good pots (I hope – I still need to trim them). They are gnarly and full of texture just waiting for the salt to juice them up and soften all that craggy goodness. It would be ok if the kilns were here, but alas, they are 3 hours away and I need to transport them down there, and if I have left overs, I really can't do anything with them except wait for another high fire opportunity. I think I may just go for broke and make as much as possible. If I have way too much, then so be it, at least I will have lots to choose from. I got a bit stuck on the sgrafitto, so there is a LOT of it, but everything from now on is plain old clay that will get flashing slips or shinos.

Other than that, a few students and myself are going to put together an open house sometime in early to mid June to help boost the enrolment at the studio. It is located in an industrial area in the city's south east and the feeling is that some people are put off by the location. It is not in a trendy area with lots of cafes and boutiques. It is not in a residential area either. It is in a light industrial/business park area and because of this, we think that some people are nervous about it. It is not a bad area, it just isn't very busy at night, and it can feel a little isolated. The building is a Quonset, and that may not give it a very homey feel either. But you take what you can get in this town. Rents can be a bit steep for small business owners, let a lone a pottery studio owner. If we have an open house in June on a nice sunny day, when the birds are chirping, then we can open up the very large overhead door to let as much light in and make it look inviting. We can have demonstrations going on throughout the day with perhaps a stinky raku demo to attract the pyromaniacs and give away small raku bowls to the attendees. I really hate doing raku firings, but it does have that WOW factor as well as immediate gratification. I always go home feeling like I have been camping and sitting around wet smokey fire pits, but without the added bonus of smores. I usually also look like a bit bedraggled, my face is all red, my hair usually gets a bit fried from looking into the kiln to check glaze melt, and some article of clothing always gets a burn mark or two. Ya, raku and me are not friends. So, if we blitz our FB friends, our twitter followers (of which don't have), our personal e-mail lists etc, as well as advertise in all the free weekly magazines we can, then hopefully we will have a good day. If nobody shows, then it will just be a regular day at the studio. More on this to follow.

Another Trip to Medalta

It looks like I might possibly make another trip down to Medalta in the spring. My friend Susan and I are thinking of going down the weekend of April 27th to fire in their Salt and Soda kilns. Medalta is located in Medicine Hat, Alberta and is in the historic clay district. Back in the day, there was the Medalta pottery, the Hycroft pottery, and at least 1 brick factory that I know of. It is also where Plainsman Clays is located.

When I went down in Feb 2010, we had a very good tour of the Hycroft factory as well as the Medalta museum and the areas of Medalta that were off limits to the regular visitor. At that time, the new Events facility was still under construction. The facility was being constructed on top of some excavated Bee Hive kilns that you would then be able to view through the floor.

If we are able to book our trip for that weekend, it will coincide with a community clay event that Medalta is having. Their long term resident artists will be holding workshops for the public and it would be fun to be involved with that while we are firing.

I am hoping April will be much warmer than when we were there last. It was so cold that weekend that my power steering froze during the time we were glazing and loading the kilns that first evening (note to self: don't leave your car facing into the wind when it's -30 celcius). The temperature difference while we were firing in the kiln area was such that we created our own weather system. The skies were clear and blue, but it was snowing in the kiln compound..

So I am looking forward to that. Right now however, I am still not ready for the studio sale next weekend. I still need to clean out the car and empty out my boxes of pots and decide what is going and what is going into the trash to make room for the new stuff. Then I need to price which is not a science. I usually go on gut instinct for pricing. I ask myself “would I pay $xx for this?” then, do I really want to sell it (still precious to me)? If it is still precious, I jack the price up so as to alleviate the pain of letting it go. Otherwise, I try to price it fairly so that it doesn't make it impossible for the average person to buy.

getting stuff done

I managed to get a few things done this weekend, despite the heat. It managed to get up to at least 29 degrees with no breeze or a cloud in the sky. I started the day on Saturday at 9:30 by going to the mall (I know, I know, I hate the mall too). I needed to go see a man about a power cord for my macbook. Lately the cord has been kinda flaky and not charging properly. I took it in, saw a “genius” and got a new cord. Works like a charm. The mall is on the way to the studio, and after the apple visit, I toddled on over there, but splurged on a venti caramel latte before I left. My theory was to try to get to the studio as early as I could to beat the heat, but it was pretty toasty inside anyway, there was a kiln that had recently finished firing and was doing a good job at heating up the joint. When I pulled into the parking lot, there were hundreds of cars parked in every conceivable space in every lot, along the road (except ours thank goodness). There is a motor cross track at the end of the road and normally all you can hear is the annoying whine of dirt bikes flying around the track. Not so on Saturday. There was a Spartan race going on, and if you don't know what that is, and neither did I, it is an obstacle course that involves crawling under barbed wire in the mud, running up hill, running down hill, etc. I saw a lot of very muddy racers walking to their cars when they were done.


Anyway, I mixed 3 glaze tests, fingers crossed, glazed a billion pieces, and loaded a kiln. Ok, probably not a billion, but there was a lot of stuff to glaze, and not knowing exactly what will fit in the kiln, I try to make sure I have enough glazed to be able to pack it as efficiently as possible. I managed to get the custom “fire” bowl in, about 24 mugs, some tall stuff, a large platter and 4 smaller square plates, a couple of casseroles, and teapots, as well as all the test pieces. As I had mixed 3 tests, I had the 3 test cups in there, plus one where I poured all 3 in an overlapping manner around the outside, and then for giggles, I dumped all 3 tests together and tried that out on a couple of small cups. The base glaze was identical, but the oxides were different in all 3. One had just copper carb, another had copper carb and iron, and the 3rd had cobalt oxide and iron. I am hoping for a mottled green/brown, a pale mottled green, and a dark mottled greenish blue and all will hopefully have a lovely satin feel to them.

I am hoping to get the crystal firing loaded this coming friday night and then program it so that I can be there during the critical cooling and holding phase to ensure that the temp. drops as fast as possible by opening up all peeps and running a fan across them to draw as much heat out as fast as possible until the hold temp is reached.

When I was unloading the student glaze load yesterday, I became quite aware of how little people actually pay attention to anything. I sent out instructions about what to do when glazing with the crystal glazes and where to put them when finished to avoid confusion with regular ware etc. But in spite of that, I pulled out a spectacularly horrible pot yesterday that had a dry and ugly surface on it (glaze not thick enough), but where it was thick, little spiky, poorly formed crystals were evident. So, not only did they not read or follow the instructions, or ask for advice on how to glaze their work, they then put it with the standard cone 6 work. Thank goodness we limited it to the inside of bowls only or there could have been a huge mess.

Here's a pictoral rundown of my Saturday and sunday

This is some of the bisque I had to glaze


Here is a close up of a couple square plates


The ware cart starts to fill and then move into the kiln. This is the 1st shelf.

Then the second, third, and a half. My fingers are crossed right now. I'm hoping for some good tests.