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:

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.

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.

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.

How to lose 5lbs in 1 day

I went to Medicine Hat last Wednesday to fire the Salt and Soda Kilns at the Shaw Centre at Medalta.

I left right after work on Wednesday afternoon and arrived at our motel at 7:30. Kathy and I got up early and went to glaze and load the kilns on Thursday and turned the kilns on low and slow overnight to preheat. There were various issues with this round of firing. The cone packs in the soda kiln blew up during the preheat, so we were flying a bit blind. Aaron found us an optical thermographer called the Cyclops. He was not sure how to use it, so had one of the train kiln operators from the old IXL brick factory to come over and trouble shoot it with us. As this was our only guide for temperature, we used it as well as colour in the kiln. By the time a witness cone bent in the salt kiln we had finished adding the soda, so that was pretty much a shot in the dark. We took a reading when cone 7 bent, and it looked like the “cyclops” was out by a hundred degrees or so. I think we were slightly underfired in the soda, but got some decent results. The salt was much better, although it could have used a bit more salt. In total, we added about 6 pounds of soda ash, and 14 pounds of salt. I did not take many pictures during the firing as it is too hard to do that when there are only 2 of us. If I could find a way to grow a 3^rd arm, that would help. I would look weird though.

As to the weight loss, it was all sweat. The temp in Medicine Hat on the day of the firing was about 31 degrees Celsius (87.8 F). Without the kilns it was pretty darned hot out. The kilns themselves were at about 2385 F or so at top temp. We were a little limp with the heat by the end of the day. While we were waiting for the salt kiln to reach salting temp (it took until 9 pm or so), we ordered a pizza, around the time the pizza was to arrive, a torrential downpour sprang up. So we had heat, lightning, thunder, rain and pizza.

All in all I think the firings were OK. The soda was a bit dry in spots, but the salt was relatively juicy. There were some really nice glazes in this firing. I had some excellent carbon trapping in a Malcolm Davis shino, some good colour development in the yellow salt glaze, and some really lovely pink halos and blushing on the insides of some of my rice bowls where I used the Andrew Wong Lustre glaze. That glaze can come out quite boring and white if not reduced enough (?), but this time, I think we had good reduction. Not too much, just enough. 

Oh ya, I also saw the Medalta International Cup Show. The labels had not been put up yet, but I was able to recognize quite a few potters. There were several of Jim Gottuso's yunomis and beer glasses, a couple of cups from Zygote, a wall piece from Mindy Andrews and a ton of others that I just can't recall the makers of off the top of my head. There was stoneware, porcelain, low fire, high fire, salt, soda, functional and not so functional, etc etc...Very good show. Great job Carol for picking all of these amazing cups.

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.

My bags are packed and I'm ready to go....

Well, my pots are packed at least. There are only 6 sleeps left until I leave for Medalta and it will be a weekend of extremes. Susan and I will be arriving in Medicine Hat around 10am on Thursday next week and right away we will be madly decorating our pots and loading the 2 kilns at the end of which we will probably fall down in exhausted heaps. We will fire them on Friday, so there will be periods of inactivity and then frantic salting etc. Saturday will be our down day while the kilns cool. Not sure what we will get up to, but we will find something to occupy us I am sure. Sunday will undoubtedly include both the excitement and anxiety of the unknown (think of Schrödinger's cat) and then when the kilns are opened and all possible unknown results are fixed with our observations, we will probably shed a tear or two over the pots that did not make it. I am sure however that there will be lovely results and hopefully the keepers outweigh the crap. Here are a few pics of what I am taking. These are by no means all of my pots, but they do represent a fair chunk.

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.

Fancy Legs

The women in my immediate family (my mum, sister and myself) suffer from what my mum has always termed “antsy legs”. The pharmaceutical industry has now termed it “restless leg syndrome”. I guess to be able to charge money for a new drug. Anyway, for a while now, we have been calling this irritating problem “fancy legs”. My sister was talking about her antsy leg to a friend, who had no idea what she was talking about and misunderstood and thought she was saying that she had “fancy legs”. So there ya go.

Long story short, I was unable to get to sleep for a while last night due to this problem. I also love to self diagnose myself via the internet. I have had localized muscle pain in my left buttock, and I think it is Piniformis Syndrom. The piniformis muscle is rubbing against the sciatic nerve due to pelvic torsion caused by a car accident 10 years ago. I think this is also exacerbating the fancy leg problem. I went to the massage therapist a couple of weeks ago and she worked a miracle (albeit only temporary). However, that night, the fancy leg was quite extreme, so me thinks they are linked.   On the clay front, the kilns are now working again. The electrician was in to diagnose/fix them on Monday. They both had some relay issues. So tonight, I guess I will be loading what did not fire properly last week. I have some more plates to terra sig, and 2 very large bottles that I have already terra sig'd and now need shellacking. The new batch of sig is very good. I am getting a very high gloss on it after burnishing. The last batch seemed to haze up and never really got very shiny. It almost makes me want to pit fire them...

Glazing, Firing & Drinking Irish Whiskey

Kiln is fixed! I should be ok to fire this weekend. So glazing/loading tonight and if I can fill the kiln, then I will fire it off tonight as well. That should not be an issue as I always have stuff kicking around that has been glazed, but not fired, and then there is that whack of stuff that needs to be re fired from the last time a kiln element blew.


So, that will be my evening. I don’t want to have to unload a kiln of mugs the same day that they are picking them up. That would be too nerve wracking.

We are having our 2nd semi annual studio clean up day next Wednesday. We have been in the space for 3 years, and have had difficulties cleaning and maintaining it. Because it is a privately owned recreational studio, with all different kinds of people, cleanliness can be an issue. Some people don’t feel that they should have to clean up things like wedging tables, plaster tables, the floor around their wheel etc as they pay to come here to get away from cleaning at home. They feel it is the ownerships responsibility. Others are just plain forgetful, and others are just lazy (I probably fall in that category to some degree)

One person can not maintain the space on their own. The floors are unsealed concrete and they do not clean up well. If this was a city run operation, then there would be a budget for cleaners etc. The bonus for coming in to clean the studio is that we will all be going out to the Dog & Duck for a wind up party for the Water Valley Celtic Music Festival. There will be some of the musicians from the festival in attendance and I am sure the music will be great, as usual.

In the discussion surrounding this clean up / wind up “party”, Dave, our fearless leader, was regaling stories from our trip to Ireland to anyone that would listen. Apparently I am an alcoholic, at least in his version of events (which get distorted with every telling). Yes, I was seen taste testing various scotches, bourbons & Irish whiskeys at the Middleton Distillery near Cork (they used to make Jameson’s there) and was a bit flushed in some of the post distillery pictures. You can’t visit and not do that. I learned several things that day. I learned why I don’t like scotch, and why I actually do like Irish whiskey best. I do not like the taste of burnt dirt (aka smoky peat). I also like it because it is triple distilled, unlike bourbon (aka corn whiskey) which is traditionally only distilled once.

Yes, I was also seen lifting a pint or 2 of Murphy’s Stout and Guinness on occasion. But to hear Dave tell it, I was sloshing everywhere we went. BTW, I like Murphy’s better than Guinness, but I don’t believe you can get it here in Canada, at least not this far west, but then I have not looked that hard either. I have to say, that with the amount of food we ate, and most of it being in the form of soda bread, spotted dick, more bread, breaded fish, chips, potatoes etc… it’s a wonder anyone can get drunk in Ireland. When we were at Marcus’s for the salt firing and other pottery related demos etc, we started our day with oatmeal, at 10:00 we stopped for a tea break that usually included scones, spotted dick, other assorted bready items etc. Then there was lunch, and the 2:00 tea break and then dinner at about 6. By then, I had consumed my carbohydrate allotment for the year. I should mention that just before we went on this wee adventure, I had been on the Atkins Diet which contains absolutely no refined or processed carbs of any kind. I fell off that carb wagon very fast. It didn’t hurt much as bread is soft and apparently I was drunk anyway.

Long Weekend Shennanigans...

This past weekend was the Victoria Day long weekend. I spent Friday night and all day Saturday at the studio, as well as a split shift on Sunday (sounds a bit sweat shopish). I was at the studio from 9:30am to 1pm madly glazing, then I went open housing with a friend of mine who is thinking of buying a condo. Her rent will be going up and other life situations have brought this to a head and now she is thinking of moving, so I went to a new condo project with her and then we drove around for a bit looking and then stopped for beer and food and then I was back to the studio at 4:30 and glazed and loaded the kiln until 9:30pm. I wouldn’t normally spend so long on the glazing at one time, but I was hoping to get one more load out of the kiln before the Mad Potters sale on Saturday. I took Monday off. I slept in for the first time in a really long time, got up, didn’t shower, barely got dressed. Dealt with the ribs that were defrosting in the fridge (I cooked them up and had a mid afternoon dinner out of them). The air outside my condo was heavy with the scent of the lilac in the front yard that is just starting to blossom, and the small tree outside my patio that I don’t know the name of, but it must be a cherry of some type. The pink/white blossoms are all out and I am sure some of what I smell outside is from that.


I did not think about the pots in the kiln at all on Monday, I just vegged out. I got an e-mail this morning addressed to all studio members and the title was Kiln Stuff. Hmmm. I read on and it looks like one of the elements went again. As this is not my kiln, I can’t really comment on how it is maintained, but when the elements start to go, it would probably behoove you to change them all out at the same time. Not so here. In an attempt to not have to buy all the new elements at once, they are being replaced as they die, which has been about 1-2 firings in between every replacement. I think so far 3 of the 6 elements have been replaced, so this would now be the 4th that needs changing.

This is of course interfering with getting ready for the sale. I had a few things in this firing that I really wanted to put out on Saturday. Maybe it will get fixed today and then no worries, but then again, maybe it will get fixed on Thursday, which would mean very hot pots on Friday. I will be in the studio tonight to teach so I can take stock of the situation and find out if it might be fixed in time for a refire on Wednesday. I had a lot of my bas relief shellacked pots in there. Approximately 14 teabowls, a tall jar with wire doodads on the lid, a test piece for Dave using some Alberta slip, a couple of large platters and other random tall stuff. I had a few glaze combos in there that I was anxious to see as well. Oh well, just another case of Murphy rearing his ugly head again.

I won't be taking these pots to CC to refire, just not enough time. I have a lot of stuff for the sale, that is not the issue, I just wanted some of these pots too.

Kilns cooled, unloaded and now I am home, sore, and very very tired

Ok, Here we go. As you could see from my last post, I was away this past weekend firing the salt and soda kilns out at the Shaw Centre at Medalta in the Historic Clay District of Medicine Hat.
We (Me, Lorraine, Kathy, Claire, Keli, & Sumaya and her little guy and husband) left Calgary early Thursday morning, and we arrived at the centre just after noon, and began glazing etc at around 1 ish. I made waaaayyyy too many pots, but I had lots to choose from. We ended up loading just after 6 and then the kilns were turned on low over night to help dry out the wads so they wouldn't freeze and then explode in the firing. Thursday and Friday were the COLDEST to date this year. I believe we got down to -28 over night on Thursday. In fact, when we left the centre, my car's power steering froze and I had to drive to the hotel without any power steering and that is quite a feat when the roads are all rutted with snow and ice, and it's dark and in a city I'm not familiar with.
Friday was firing day, and we were at the centre by 9am turning on the kilns, but as salting would not happen until cone 9 or 10, we had a few hours to kill and Aaron, the artistic director, took us on a tour of the Medalta museum, and some other areas that have not been restored/preserved yet, and some parts that are under construction for the new museum. The Medalta factory had been in operation since the very early 1900's, where they fired beehive kilns and produced functional stoneware items for everyday use, and then began making semi vitreous white ware etc. At 2:30 or so we charged the soda kiln with 2 pounds of soda, and then sprayed 1 pound of soda and then added another 4 or 5 pounds of soda over then next 45 minutes. Salting began around 4 pm in the salt kiln, and I believe we were all done and buttoned up around 5:45.
On Saturday, while the kilns were cooling, we toured the Hicroft factory with Aaron. Hicroft was another pottery in Medicine had that was in operation up into the 80's. The factory is in an as is condition. When it closed down, nothing was moved, or sold off, so all the old machinery is still there, the slip pits still have dried slip in them, there are aprons on the hooks and time cards still by the time clock.

The bag wall on the right hand side of the salt kiln fell over and will need to be rebuilt, but that was expected. I had a pot on that bag wall, so it was pushed against the kiln wall and was blocking one of the salting ports, even though I had to chip it off, it still looks great.

Inside the soda kiln before unloading

Inside the salt kiln before unloading

close up of the ware carts after unloading

Keli and Sumaya's salt pots

My salt pots

Kathy and Lorraine's salt pots

Lorraine and Claire's salt pots

My soda pots

Sumaya and Keli's soda pots

Lorraine and Kathy's soda pots

Close up of the back side of the salt kiln. Very crusty...

The same for the soda kiln, but not quite as bad

interior of the salt kiln

Interior of the soda kiln