Salt firing at school

I spent the last half of this week wadding, loading and firing pots. Martha, Doug, and I finished salting the kiln at around 12 am. I chose to let the kiln cool fairly rapidly to around 1800 in order to achieve some shiney surfaces. Looking in there at the last minute I could see what looked like some pretty nice surfaces. This load of pots is probably the best lookig load I have ever made and I am extremely anxious to see what they look like. I made the big pot with a coil and throw method and it is around 30 inches tall. I am excited to see what happens with it as well as make some more that are bigger some time soon.


This is the front shelf stack packed to the ceiling. I have a number of clay body tests in this kiln load that I really hope work. If they do then I may be digging a whole bunch of clay very soon. I also have the first fountian I have ever made and designed in the kiln, but you cannot see it on account of it being in the back. It was a request from a man who goes to my church. Hopefully it did not crack.
I start Penland at the beginning of the week after next. I am extremely excited. Especially after seeing all the fun Ron Philbeck is having by looking at his blog. maybe I will make some penland posts while I am gone there. I am going to try and take some good photos before I leave of these new pots that hopefully come out well. I will try and get some of those up here.
Talk to ya later.

Im still making pots

Here are just some of the pots I have been making that I plan on firing at school pretty soon.  I have some different alkaline tests I want to try out.  There are some other shelves behind these with other pots.  I have enjoyed making the composite bottles the most and have been working on my lidded jars a good bit here lately.  

These are some goblets I made for two friends of mine getting married.  I wanted to make one with a dragon and the other with a phoenix which are chinese symbols representing male and female.  I made the rooster cup just because I wanted to and I like it the best.  

Firing at Matt Jones

I had such an awesome time helping Matt and his apprentice Alex fire the extremely large kiln full of pots from Saturday to Sunday.  The picture above is of Matt's son London and one of his buddies shooting bb guns at cans.  Matt's son is the boy in the back.  I had especially fun spending time with London and Matt's daughter Sara Francis.  They are really great kids.  

This is just a picture of Mike stoking.  You can see Matt in the background and Alex's girlfriend Molly opening the door for a good hard stoke.  I learned a great deal about kilns this weekend since the wood kilns I usually fire are much smaller.  Although there were many similarities there were a vast amount of subtle differences I really enjoyed.  

Many people dropped by throughout the day to catch a glimpse of firing.  Mike brought a new puppy with him who got plenty of attention from everyone especially the children.  This was such a cute picture I could not resist putting it up.

It rained pretty much the whole time I was there.  The Jones's have two little ponds that are flooding into one another creating a massive waterfall between the two.  It may seem like a problem, but it seems the kids loved playing in it.  The picture above is of water that is harnessed to produce energy for his glass crusher.  There was so much water flowing that it could not go into the tube fast enough.  We cleaned a number of fairly large rocks out of it to help fix it.  I truthfully need to get on the ball and build me one of those pivoting glass crushers.  Those things are so cool.  There is an old post Alex Matisse did on it a while back.  Check it out here.  Look and you can see the difference in water pressure.  It is pretty interesting.

Fish from Saturday with an update

Here are some bass my dad and I caught last Saturday morning.  The one I am holding weighs 6 pounds and would have weighed more if I would have caught her before she laid her eggs.  They were right up on the banks and if you look at their tails and and back you can see they are pretty beat up.  That is from them digging out a bed on the bank to spawn.  

It has been a while since I have been on this thing because of school and stuff, but I have made a few pots.  I have about 20 or so that just came out of the kiln at school that look really nice.  They are alkaline glazed and turned out pretty shiny and have some nice places where the salt hit them.  I also fired the little teabowl that I had a test clay body on and it worked really well so I went and dug some more of that stuff and am running some tests to increase the plasticity.  I wili post some pictures of these as soon as I take them.  I have one more exam left tomorrow morning and I am done for the semester.  Whoo hoo!  I see alot more time to get some work done in the future since the summer is coming up.  talk to ya soon.

  

New Salt Glazes!

These are some of my ash glazes that came out of the salt kiln at school. I was very pleased with the results. I had a few different ones and different slips underneath. My favorite one is the vase that got the most salt and looks the most wet. I had a bunch of them turn out matted which I think was due to the cooling rate. I got some grinding ahead of me though.

Diggin some clay

Here is some a sample of some of the clay I have been digging. I have done tests on the more yellowish white looking clay and it does not fire hot enough. I have tested this clay in one pot and it fired beautifully with an ash glaze on it so I am going to try some more. I honestly think it looks like it would melt going to a high temperature but it held pretty strong once so hopefully it will do it again. I am planning on doing some serious digging while I am out of school on Monday or so. Should be alot of fun! This is a loose teabowl that I made becuase the clay was so soft. Dang it sure is a gorgeous clay body though aint it!

Crappie Fishin'

Well my dad and I have been trying to catch some crappie here the last few weeks. The water needs to be around 60 degrees before they start hitting the banks and it was 58 today when we fished. I caught 6 and my dad caught seven in a little over an hour. I would say they arent quite at peak yet so we got some real good fishin ahead of us. My dad and I are leaving to go turkey hunting tomorrow and I am pretty pumped about it. I am out of school for easter break the rest of the week and Monday. I have a load of cleaning up to do downstairs since all of the show rush and all. It feels so good to be back though even if it is just cleaning up. I have been stuck at school writing papers and stuff all week.