Sunday 1 February 2009

Saturday Firing


Had a firing all day yesterday.  Doug and I shut it down after about 2 hours of salting at around seven o' clock.  I am so anxious though on account of having a few pots mess up.  Actually I only had 2 teapot lid knobs pop off, but it really worries me on account of the possibility of them landing on some of the other work.  I cant believe I made the mistake of not drilling a hole through the bottom up the knob.  Doug told me that it was an easy mistake to make, but it was humbling and reminded me that I am still learning.  This firing will benefit me in the photography part of my Penland application.  All of the work for the show in Shelby on Thursday (Treasures of The Earth) will come from this firing as well.  I guess I put quite a bit of pressure on myself for this one.  I had about 40 or so pieces in there along with some other student work from school.  Hopefully I don't drive myself nuts before unloading on Wednesday.             
      I had such a good time spending the day with Doug though.  Since I am planning on doing some kiln building after March and into the summer I had plenty of reading to do and questions to ask as the firing day trucked along.  I am getting lots of ideas from this book.  I am now thinking of using pugged out bricks made of a high fire clay content, some  cement, sawdust.... (you get the idea).  I would put the wet pugs on the outside of the wooden frame and fire the bricks to temperature when I fire the kiln.  I am going to do some tests before I actually build the real one this summer.  If anyone has any suggestions or reasons why this will not work please let me know so I can consider things and possibly adjust my plans.  Thanks everybody!!     

No comments:

Post a Comment