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Firing

in
My firing went well. After going back and checking my old kiln logs I felt like I have been firing too fast at the beginning of the firing. So I slowed down, especially between 1400 and 1650. I also did a longer body reduction, 45 minutes instead of 20. Not a hard reduction, I'd say it was medium, long flame out the top front peep and barely a wisp out of the middle front. Maybe that's more neutral. This was at cone 08. Anyhow it's what I did. Then I oxidized for 10 minutes then back to neutral. At 2100 I oxidized again for 30 minutes. I started putting the chunk in when the 8's were going down. I put in 5000g of 'chunk' which 2500 of is whiting and the other 2500 is soda ash and baking soda (See Gail Nichols book, Soda, Clay, Fire). I tried to stay around cone 9, my colors seem to be brighter at cone 8 and 9. After I was finished putting the soda chunks in I soaked for 1 hour in oxidation. I then shut the burners down and crash cooled for 25 minutes by pulling out the damper and opening the soda/salt ports.

The stacking was a bit different. I don't usually put those tall pots in the middle of the stack, but the top has been so bad I didn't want to sacrifice them again. Turns out it would have been fine. Anyhow, the back of the kiln was dry in places. I need to work this out either by spraying some soda solution in or by putting 'soda cups' back there.

I did not go with the diagonal burner arrangement this time either, doing so may help push the soda to the back so I may try that in the future.

Okay that's my update. I'll post some individual pot images tomorrow. Thanks everyone for checking in and being supportative.

Yes!

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Just unloaded. Very good results! I will post some pics tomorrow and tell more about it. I am sort of on a tight schedule today, have been working on the house etc. I am so relieved to have had a good firing.

Friday evening

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I peeped in the kiln just a while ago. I have mixed feelings...it looks a bit dry overall but up front a few things look like they got too much soda. I am trying not to get depressed about it, I'll unload tomorrow and hopefully be happy with most of it. Or all of it, who knows?

Right now I am listening to Pandora Internet Radio while waiting on the oven to get super hot so I can bake some pizzas. It has to stay on 500 for an hour so my pizza stone gets really nice and hot. The pizzas will cook in 8 or 9 minutes. I made my dough this morning and I am looking forward to some good eats.

That's it for now.

Firing

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I am in for lunch while the kiln does it own thing for little while. I just checked and cone 5 was started at the front in the middle, which is usually the hottest part of the kiln. I have all my 'chunk' mixed up and ready to go. I am increasing that by about 1 lb and dropping the salt back from 3 lbs to 1lb. At least that's the plan, if the draw rings look like I am needing more salt then I will add another pound probably.
As Phil Rogers suggested I did a good body reduction for one hour. Prior to this I also fired a little slower than usual and really let the kiln have some time between 1500 and 1600 to burn out any carbon. I have been thinking and I realized that my bisque temperature is really all over the place. The bottom of that little kiln will be cone 06 down and who knows what the next two levels up are. Maybe 010 or somewhere. So I thought I'd do this soak during my firing to let anything burn out that I missed in the bisque.
Early on this kiln did great. At that time I was single firing and my firings were long. Sometimes 26 hrs. But the pots were always really nice. I always felt that long slow heat up was good and maybe it's what's been missing lately.
Well enough of all this. I will start putting the chunk in when the 8's start, till then I'm just going to hang out and read a little and listen to the rain on the tin roof.

I'm cool...well not really

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Sarah shot this picture last night. She said I looked like a total geek sitting on the couch with all my kiln notes and books on salt and soda firing, not to mention my really hip attire. I aspire to be a really cool dude but it just isn't happening. I am more of a weirdo geek type with little artsy bits here and there.
I like nerds and geeks. After all I was a mathematics major in college. There are lots of types, you have the computer nerds, intellecutals, with pocket protecters and thick glasses, or the pimpley, shy, video game geeks, or the weird, fantasy loving dungeons and dragons type, and then theres the Napoleon Dynamite type, sort of out there in a rural backcountry kinda way. That would be me in a way I guess, especially on the dance floor.

Catching up

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The first image is all the bisque ware in my shop this morning. I pre wadded everything and planned on loading the kiln tomorrow. But I got finished sort of quick and so I decided to go ahead and load the kiln and fire a day early. This is going to work out for the best weatherwise I think. Anyhow the kiln is all loaded so now I just have to come up with my game plan for the firing. If you've been following along you know I've had a couple problems with the last few firings. So I am going to go over all my old kiln logs again and take into consideration all the good advice I've been given and see what happens.

Ready, Set, Go

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Monday morning and I feel swamped already. Lots happening this week but I'll get to that as it happens.
My weekend went well. The house renevoations continue, on Saturday we moved a water line and trenched a line down to my garden. That took the better part of the day and it was rather physical labor and dirty so we didn't get to anything inside. I hope this week to get a closet built and a header put in. I think the work we did on Saturday upset a mouse family because I caught 2 small mice in the house yesterday. I hope the others relocated outside somewere, or at least out of sight.
What about the Oscars? I only watched about an hour and a half. I thought Ellen did a great job hosting, good clean humor. Helen Mirin got lots of attention, but it looks like The Departed took the big prize home. I have yet to see that film or The Queen. I have seen Little Miss Sunshine, which I liked a lot.
I have a page on Southern Potters dot com now. Please visit.
My good friend Tom Gray has started blogging again. (Tom was blogging way back when Blogger.com was born, he's usually ahead of the times). He is a good writer so check it out often.
I've gotten my bisque going this morning and I am off to yet another committee meeting at the Arts Council. I will be firing at the end of the week!!!
Have a good Monday.

End of the Week

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Today I finished getting the last of the pots slipped for the next firing. I will bisque on Monday and fire on Friday or Saturday next week. I am looking forward to it.
There's a good show up at Akar gallery in Iowa City featuring yunomi. Yunomi (as I understand it) means 'hot water cup' often called tea bowls or tea cups by western potters. These do not hold the same status as a 'chawan' which is a tea bowl used in the tea ceremony. Yunomi are more of an 'everyday' cup. Anyhow that's how it was explained to me. If I'm wrong on that please fill me in. These kinds of cups are fun to make and are good warm ups or ways to sketch out ideas before beginning a run of pots. We have lots in our home and drink juice, water, soda, and yes even tea from them.

Bowling for Dollars

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Yesterday the Cleveland County Arts Council held it's annual Bowling for Dollars fund raising event. Here's how it works, potters donate soup bowls to the Arts Council, people pay $15 to come in and pick a bowl and then have a lunch of soup and bread and dessert at the Arts Council. The money raised goes to schloarships for school age kids to take art classes. This event always sells out and we are only limited by the number of bowls donated. This year we had right at 200. Gail Point and her crew do all the cooking on site, yesterdays soup choices were 'chicken and shrimp gumbo' and 'potato, leek and cheddar' . They were both delicious. My job is to carry big pots of soup from the kitchen, which is upstairs, down to the basement where everyone is served. The stairs are really steep and I have to make sure I don't get to the bottom too fast. Bowls awaiting selection.
The line to get into the 'bowl room' just before 11 am. (that's my display on the left, still up from the Treasures of the Earth show)

Cruets

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Here are my pots with long spouts. Pretty good I guess. I am way behind on the pottery cruet craze that hit a couple years ago. Anyhow these were fun to make, we'll see if they work.

Better

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I have an appointment with the doc in an hour so I came in to get all cleaned up and ready to go. I have had a better day in the studio so far. I got some inspiration this morning and made some deep dishes that I haven't done in a while and guess what else....2 cruets. Ha. Cruets. Really these were made to try on some new spouts. I pulled the spouts on a dowel rod and made them fairly long and tapered. Easier than throwing them. I saw the technique a while back on a video with Jane Shellenbarger. Anyhow I haven't gotten them on the pot yet and it will be interesting to see if they fire and stay in place. If I like them when I get them assembled I'll post an image. I like this clay too, I used it a lot years ago. It has a nice tooth. Okay gotta go.

Psyching Myself Out

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One of my problems yesterday was that I got to thinking about the upcoming exhibit at NCECA and what pots I was going to send. I have a 3 pot limit and early on I said, okay I'll send a pitcher, an animal jar, and a set of mugs (I can get away with a set being one pot). Well I talked to my friends who are in the show and they are making teapot sets, or pitcher sets, or cream and sugar sets on a tray, or what ever, cruets on little saucers. See I'm pretty low key. I make a pot and that's that. No tray, no saucer, no fancy this or that. And I am not sending a teapot, there will be 1000 teapots at NCECA. So you can already see how this self depreciating talk began in my head. So I am standing in my studio (I don't have a chair in there), thinking that I have one or two days left to make whatever it is I am going to send, (I do have some pots set aside so it's not like I have NOTHING at this point) and just thinking I need something 'great' that will not get lost in the sea of glaze and color. Well after a half day of making 3 pots I just decided to be who I am and I'll send what I want. I still don't know exactly what that will be but I do have a nice fat jar with good orange peel texture on it, and I am hoping to get a good deep footed bowl out of this next firing. Oh yea and a set of mugs. I'm not changing what I do just to get attention or try and make a sale.

More Monday

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Well today was a 180 from last Monday, much less productive. I just couldn't get going. I did finish up some oval vases and threw a couple jars before lunch. I am coming off this beta blocker that I have been on for several years and I don't know if that's making me tired or what. I have an appointment with the doctor on Wednesday. Anyhow I forced myself to make some bowls and bakers after lunch and I got most of my demo for class tomorrow night set up.

I am out of clay now too. I knew I was going to run out, the plan is to buy some commercial clay that I know pretty well and use it until late March, then mix up about a ton of clay. I hate mixing in cold weather and so I am just going to wait till things warm up a little.

Tomorrow I have a committe meeting at the Arts Council and then I'll have a little time in the studio before heading out to Charoltte to buy clay and then on to class. Long day.

Monday

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I have my bisque going and hopefully my studio is warming up a little. I will be working on some last minute pots as today is going to be my last wet day for the upcoming firing. Not too much to report at the moment.

Stairs

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Friday night I woke up at 3 am and realized I was very unhappy with the choice I had made for the new stairwell. This feeling had been building all day long, but it wasn't until the early morning hour that it hit me that there had to be a better way of doing this. The main qualification for this project is that there is a door to the stairs that can be shut to close off the downstairs from the upstairs. All of the things I had came up with had the door at the bottom of the stairs, this meant that the stairs had to become steeper in order to have to space at the foot of the stairway to accommodate a door and let it have room to swing open. After cutting the stringers for the new stairs I had this feeling of dread that I was going to have to go up and down these things several times a day. Espicallly down, I am not very gracefull and down could mean DOWN.
So between the hours of 3am and 5am I came up with what I thought would work...the door at the top. I waited until 7am before I actually got up and got my tape measure to make sure it would work. Yes it would. Now I had to clear it with Sarah, I don't think this was the conversation she wanted to wake up to on Saturday morning but my helpers were going to be here at 8 am and I had to break the news to them and be ready to do some work. Sarah was fine with it all and so was my brother in law who is a carpenter by trade, he said he thought it was a much better idea than what I had come up with before. So, we headed out to breakfast and then off to get some materials.
I am really pleased with what we accomplished. I got to keep my old, long, comfortable stairs. Sarah will get her door at the top, and we even got a new beam installed so the upstairs doesn't become the downstairs in the future.
I know this is probably confusing to many of you who have never visited our home. I will try to give a little house/pottershop history later on in another post. I slept well last night and I am actually looking forward to the next time we all get together to build a closet, and do some electrical work. Oh yea and move a water line. (The list is very long).

End of Week

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I finished up things today. These 5 pounders got handles and will get slipped tomorrow. I made six but only 4 made the cut. Tomorrow I am working all day on tearing out the existing stairway and installing a new stairwell and stairs. It's probably going to be a long day. The new stairwell will have a door at the bottom, the new stairs have to be steeper to accomodate this change. I am going to miss the old stairs, I've climbed them many times over the past 10 years. Anyhow, change is good, at least that's what I've heard.

Have your cake...

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Here is the flourless chocolate cake recipe. I got it off FoodTV's site courtesy of Tyler Florence. I'm not really an experienced baker so if I can make this anyone can. It was very tasty. I skipped making my own whipped cream and just used store bought.

1 pound bittersweet chocolate, chopped into small pieces
1 stick unsalted butter
9 large eggs, separated
3/4 cup granulated sugar, plus 1 tablespoon
1 cup heavy cream cold
Confectioners' sugar, for dusting

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Butter a 9-inch springform pan.

Put the chocolate and butter into the top of a double boiler (or in a heatproof bowl) and heat over (but not touching) about 1 inch of simmering water until melted. Meanwhile, whisk the egg yolks with the sugar in a mixing bowl until light yellow in color. Whisk a little of the chocolate mixture into the egg yolk mixture to temper the eggs - this will keep the eggs from scrambling from the heat of the chocolate; then whisk in the rest of the chocolate mixture.

Beat the egg whites in a mixing bowl until stiff peaks form and fold into the chocolate mixture. Pour into the prepared pan (spray the bottom with nonstick spray) and bake until the cake is set, the top starts to crack, and a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out with moist crumbs clinging to it, 20 to 25 minutes. Let stand 10 minutes, then unmold.

While the cake is cooking, make the whipped cream. Whip the cream until it becomes light and fluffy. Dust the cake with confectioners' sugar.

Serve at room temperature with the whipped cream.

No Flour

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I baked this cake last night for our Valentine's Day dessert. Sarah had a late appointment with a client so I cooked dinner, Pad Thai, Sarah's favorite. It's also quick and easy. This 'cake' was pretty easy too. It has no flour but it does have 1 lb of bittersweet chocolate, and 9 eggs. Not so good for you but it sure tasted great...with a little whipped creme on top.

One more

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I forgot to include these oval bakers in that previous post. Don't want to leave anyone out. So I hope to get a couple boards of mugs made tomorrow and then on Friday I'll have bisque. As soon as this other stuff dries I'll do another bisque (hopefully next week) and then I'll be firing the salt kiln.