More progress on the kiln rebuild...

I have more done on the enlargement and reshaping of my manabigama. I had all the excavating done and was ready for stone dust base to put my concrete blocks on.  I took my time and got them all leveled up and ready for the expanded steel mesh or lath as some masons call it.                      

Now I started the layout, in brick as I had everything done on paper, making room for my shelves and the firebox. I made the necessary adjustments and it's looking good.  I moved the level for the grates up one brick as I know it's good to leave enough room for lots of glistening embers without choking the primary air intakes.

Now i can get the brick saw and make up some special mix mortar consisting of 50% fireclay and 50% grog. I'll make it the consistancy of peanut butter for troweling and like a milkshake for dipping. It will setup nicely when we fire. No Portland cement on the inside of the kiln though. I will add 10% to the outside's insulating coating (as a binder) of the course sawdust, fire clay, vermiculite and sand mix.  I will also use chicken wire to hold the insulation together as it will crack. 

I will remove the placed bricks and "mortar" them in place. This was a "dry run" to make adjustments where needed and get the layout right.

STONE QUARRY HILL ART PARK - WINTERFEST 2011, WOOD-FIRED RAKU

We had the Syracuse Ceramic Guild's Winterfest-ivities today. Folks from all over Central New York came to Stone Quarry Hill Art Park in Cazenovia, N.Y. for a day of snow filled activities. There was lots of sledding down the big hill that the Art Park sits on. Inside the barn was hot chocolate, coffee, snacks, etc. and Denise and Sheila helping visitors with the un-frozen raku glazes.

There was a core crew of four of us, braving the blustery cold winds to fire our almost new, wood-fired raku kiln. "Double D" Dave, Dave "L" and me on the right, are prepping for the start while Sabrina took a minute to help prepare things inside. Wood splitting, unthawing and pre-heating the bricks took a bit of time to do.

Here's "Double D" Dave ('cause his last name starts with D and the other Dave's last name starts with L) splitting some wood in anticipation of the high temps we needed later. We fired to approximately 1850* F

Here's two of the kids glazing, I think the lens fogged up coming in out of the cold, as a few more rest in the background, and when the pots come out, we preheat them a couple of minutes to finish drying them, as they're freshly glazed pots.

Now the firing takes about fifteen minutes to get to temp, then I remove the door, we take the still glowing, orange - hot pots out with long tongs and place them in a trash can that has a few inches wood shavings in it, throw a big hand full of shavings on top of the pots and then Sabrina quickly pops the lid on while the shavings are still burning to create a smoke filled can. The glazes are molten at this time and will be affected by the changes in the atmosphere. We are reducing the amount of oxygen (why we call it "reduction") and increasing the amount of carbon particles, which in turn affects the looks of the clay and glazes (creating surface lusters, crystals and keeping copper and iron from returning to it's oxidized state which would change the color dramatically).

Maybe I should have titled this post " A Raku Tutorial - Winterfest Edition "

Campfire / Forest Fire Thing ... Part III

The Winners of the giveaways are:  Dawn for the mug and mywifesstudio for the yunomi. Congrats to them and I hope everyone had fun.  Contact me at williperri@aol.com with your name and address and I'll ship them out to you!  :-]

Now for some close ups...

 It was a nice firing and a great time... they came back to pick theirs up on Saturday Morning. Everyone was real pleased with the results! We will have them back next year, same time.

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...

KILN'S DONE...

I'm tired but I wanted to share some pictures from the firing. I can't wait 'till Sunday. I got a soft 12 in front and 10 almost flat in the back. Only about a cone difference front to back, gettin' better. Top to bottom is even. I'ma likin' this kiln...

Thanks Scot...

I had the good fortune of having Scot, a new member of our Syracuse Ceramic Guild, come down to help with the prep for a wood firing workshop scheduled for May 15 and 16. Dave also helped but I forgot to get the camera again when he came. Sorry Dave. The picture above shows him finishing the beech up, a nice finishing wood as its heat value is very high at 89-91 and it is plentiful here. He proved to be a quick study and had the art of splitting down in no time. You may not think it's that hard, but there are some woods that are challenging. The grain is wavy in some woods such as apple. You can see some of it in the lower right corner of the picture. I am trying apple wood this firing. I have an old apple orchard on the property with parts of the trees coming down at times. It does have some very nice coaling qualities like beech does. I also have some large hophornbeam that I girdled two years ago and are now standing seasoned wood waiting to be cut. It has the highest heat value in my woods. It will be interesting to see how it looks in some line blends. I usually start at 60% ash, 40% feldspar with 10% china clay added.

New site: Wikiclay.com

Hey everyone,
I just joined a new ceramic information site by Michael Kline called Wiki Clay. Check it out for information on artists, techniques, all kinds of useful information. I'm on a list of ceramic artists who blog.

http://wikiclay.com/wiki/clayceramics-blogs

On your mark, get set, almost ready to go...

I'm back... I've been really busy with getting a lot ready for April and May's events. April includes my first firing of the year. I have hundreds and hundreds of pieces ready to go into the kiln. The weather has been really nice, today was 87! I have been cutting a lot of firewood and splitting it and you can see the stacks in the picture above. I cut, split and load the trailer right in the woods. Leaving all the "mess" right there to return to the Earth.


I do bring small amounts of logs to the "landing" we call it, instead of moving everything to the logs. If I have a big pile, then of course I'll move to it.

I'll put it in the loader on the tractor and park it right next to the splitter, split and throw it right back in. Then drive the splits back to the kiln area or where ever I'm piling it. I like to have two firings worth split ahead of time, so it will be dry by the time I get to it.


I had to stop and replace the "spider" it's called. It's a hard rubber piece that goes between the engine shaft and the hydrolics-box shaft. By the time I went to the store, put it in and got back in business, I had lost a few hours. (Hard to keep your momentum going with all that going on!). You can see the splitter tipped up on end to get at it.
I thought this would be good to show how much work goes into wood-firing, on top of the making of the pieces themselves. Don't get me wrong, I do like playing in my woods and exercising in the fresh air and all.
May includes giving a wood-fire workshop here at the house, mostly to the guild members of the Syracuse Ceramic Guild that I belong to. There are some friends from Ithaca, New York that wanted to come too. I'll have everyone bring their own bisqued cone 10 clay and we will cover ash friendly glazing, wadding, loading and bricking up the door on Saturday. Then I'll get up early Sunday morning and candle the kiln for a few hours until they come around 10. Then I will guide the firing of the kiln, explaining about ember management, the stoking cycle - the different atmospheres, wood types and their effects, temperature management... all that stuff. I'm the only wood-firing potter in my guild so it will be cool for them. I'll have them come back the following Saturday to pick up their pieces. I have a wedding to go to in the afternoon. My step-son Ben and his girl friend Tiffany are tying the knot.
I'll have lots of blog postings soon with my April firing and May workshop with details and in color.

Not High-Def, 3-D though... sorry. I'm old school.

"Stack 'a Work for the Fourties"

Another stack of work ready for the bisque kiln. It's getting more exciting now because now I know I now have enough to fill the wood kiln again. I have altered a lot of pieces to compliment the wood-firing process. Soft corners and uneven surfaces, trip up the flow of the ash and flame, leaving interesting surfaces in the wake. I will bisque fire these and then start my glazing, which should take me a couple of weeks, working part-time - I still teach full-time.
The glazing will be exciting because I can continue with my experiments of color combinations and layers, an ongoing, never ending process. The timing of all this should take me to later in March where I can fire. Mid fourties would be nice.

burning off those extra calories... with some throwing

It is "warm" today, up to 41 degrees. There was some serious fog early that filled up the whole valley. I could just see the tops of the ridges on the other side and you can just make out the barns and house of my neighbor Tom through the trees.

Then the sun came out. I took the dogs out for some exercise, me throwing the ball, they bring it back and we repeat again, and again and again and... See, they have me trained well. A lot of the snow has melted and we are due for single digit temperatures tonight. Gotta enjoy this when we can. I've got some neat pictures of them, Buddy you have met and the white one is Jake. He's 9 now.



Here is some of the other throwing that I'm doing to burn off those extra holiday calories... Looking forward to a "long-underwear firing" in the near future (as Jack Troy told me he calls it when they fire the Pixiegama in the beginning of February.) I have a lot more shelves to fill before I'm ready for the wood kiln. Better get burning those calories.
I hope everyone had a great holiday and has a Great New Year!!
Our Best to you.
Mary Ann and Bill