Masking Tape Stickers

The Using a masking tape sticker idea that Lindsay Rogers shared with us on Ceramic Arts Daily.

Click here to check out their link for details in the online article.

Using it to mask in an area to paint a Amaco Palladium cone 5-6 glaze over a previously glazed and fired surface.

Three layers of glaze and the edges stayed crisp.

Fired off and it definitely added to the composition of the surface. 

Alas, (what a fun word...) a minor, in house, celebration of the lunar eclipse this week. 

Studio ElectricMeter Log

This is one of those posts that's really just a studio note... just in case.
It's this year's electric meter log I use to keep track of the energy consumption for each load.
I log the reading on the meter when I turn on the kiln and the reading when I turn off the kiln, later I'll subtract out my averaged hourly household energy use from the final reading.


Keep in mind, this isn't a firing log made to keep track of temperature rise vs. kiln adjustments... I wish! I haven't kept one of those for a while now. Without a pyrometer, it's a mute point for my old electric Paragon.

Admittedly, I really to need dial in how I organize the information I collect on each kiln load better, just to better understand the results. Intuition gets us just so far.

When I was young... intuition and risk took me to new places where I could dream new dreams... Now, as I'm finding myself getting older, I'm learning to take notes and tailor my dreams according to what I believe I can do. I guess confidence takes us a long way.

Until then... this here is a formality of accounting.
Cheers!

Seasonal Recycling

Every year, just before the beginning of summer, I spend a few weeks recycling a few 100 pounds of studio slop into clay for a spot of R&D.

Now while this process of recycling takes 5 or 6 weeks just to turn all of the buckets of slop into usable clay... clay that's a bit too touchy for small delicate work but weird and wonderful enough to use learning to play "big".
(Take special notice of the small "b". The studio kiln's new "Half Pint" status limits in-house fired wares to 18"... soooooo, 18 inches is this summers limit.) Luckily... when I dream, this is the size perfect for Crown Pots!

Ahhhh! A Glorious mess!

This time I needed to see how a few small ideas would scale-up while. I thought this might be a good time to get a handle on how long it takes to push a small series of (8) ten pound canisters through the studio. This included wedging everything, cutting a fresh new library of stencils, throwing, trimming, blocking in, and finishing the greenware.

Actually...

Even with a plan and practice, it took a fair amount of time to shepherd the batch of greenware through to bone dry. This ended up averaging about 4 hours spent working on each piece.

It's not exactly a walk to Egypt...
but I can live with that... it is an investment of time.
And I like what I see...

Mabey it's time for a beer!

As a measure of how antsy I get when I’m firing, I can actually can hear the kiln sitter go off in the dead of night… while I’m asleep... one story up. For anyone not familiar with the sound… it’s a mere click… that’s it. For me, it’s a Pavlovian sound that triggers a salivary anticipation reflex. I’m desperately hooked on seeing what happens when I mash-up a few weeks of effort in the studio and a day or 2 of experimental chaos.

It’s really a great mix when everything works…

(Bad picture, amazing glaze!)

But it still kind’a sucks when it doesn’t work…

And I’m still learning that merely unexpected isn’t the same as failed.

Most of this kiln load looked spectacular coming out of the kiln, but the plan was for most of it to go through one more low fire to resolve the surface designs, (I do have a plan…). Curvy forms, finicky glazes, and multiple firings… Yea, I know. Friends are telling me I’m making this way more complex than it needs to be, but I just can’t stop myself. I’d be a lucky man if this was symptomatic of manic compulsive behavior, then at least I’d end up with a clean house once in a while. Unfortunately that isn’t the case… I’m just bent.

Mabey it's time for a beer!

Doh!

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again… I learn more from my mistakes than from my successes, by that logic I learn LOTS everyday and I’m hoping to wake-up brilliant any day now…
Luckily, working in clay is a study of mistakes, (that’s probably why it takes so many of us decades to get where we think we are going with our work), so I know I’m not alone.

This last firing is a great example of me not listening to that tiny voice of reason that plagues me in the studio. As the voice suggested, I had sieved all of the glazes I was getting ready to use for the firing, well I thought I had… I noticed my white liner had small flecks in it. The little voice said I should stop glazing and sieve one more time, just in case… my thought, of course, was “it’ll melt”…


Well I was WRONG!

Of course the entire kiln load came out better than I was aiming for until… you look at the interior. None of the flecks melted, leaving a rough surface on the interior of every single piece. Now I get to try my hand at getting a nice thick reglaze on the interior without that making an even bigger mess of it.

Any suggestions?

Here are a few before and after shots using the texture and crawl glaze showing differing thicknesses in application. It’s pretty thin on the cup, but you can see where the unfired glaze starts cracking up at the plane changes at the ribbing.


These will crawl a lot unless a compatible glaze is used under the crawling glaze. Over the past few firings, I’ve been learning to use my Blue Hares Fur glaze to act as a stabilizer at these severe crawling points.

With the large canister, the whole thing is a sever plane changes, so the whole canister has been given a coat of the Blue Hares Fur before the crawling glaze was poured over the top. Too thick and it’ll peel right off as it dries. I needed a heavy separation on this piece so I kept spritzing down the glaze as it was trying to pull away as it was drying.

The technique seemed to work and I was very happy with the results.