The Campfire / Forest Fire Thing, Part II

Back to the wood-fire workshop posting. A view of the rest of the great weekend we had. We finished bricking up the door, using my trimmings that hit the floor for mortar.

A view of the pre-fire kiln ...

Because we glazed the day before and loaded "right after", I candled the morning of the firing starting at 6 am for about 3 1/2 hours to gentlly finish drying the ware.

A little bit of stoking... and stoking... and stoking...

And a view of the finished pieces...

One of the many beautiful pieces...

A happy crew...

Slice and dice

As you can see, this is my huge clay wedging and slicing area. I do however have a creative way of slicing bricks of clay into same size slabs that I then quarter or sometimes cut only in half. I make sets of mugs, etc. and I get them to come out close without weighing them out any more by choosing a set of sticks that has been ripped down to a certain thickness.

In this picture, you can see I'm using 1 3/4" thick pieces on each side. I then push/slide my taut cut off wire across the top of them leaving me with a slab of clay 1 3/4" x 6" x 6". I then quarter that by eye on the wire mounted to the wall and bat to the right and each quartered piece gets packed into a ball that will be 1 lb. That will give me a nice sized mug or a small bowl... I could also turn these two sticks on their side and have 2 1/2" slices for a 1 3/4 lb. ball. I have several thicknesss' and even stack them for thicker slices. Works for me!!