Of course I can’t resist a good pun. It’s the day after firing the woody, and I am tired and sore. Wierd that this is the first firing of 2010 and it seemed like it took forever. The new year is always hard for me to shift into gear, plus I’ve had some not pottery projects I’ve been working on that have been monopolizing the time. Add to that I decided to… grind all shelves and kiln wash everything (24 shelves) so I could flip them… weld new grate supports (my grates were is good condition after a years worth of firings, but the legs were falling off, so I welded some from larger gauge steel and also made it so they slide off, making it easier to pull out after the firing)… reset my arch, I had a brick slip out - yikes!… then with all the snow and rain, the ground is completely saturated, wood was damp blah blah blah excuses… My firing with generally takes 9 1/2 - 10 hours took 13, and I still the thermo never got past 2320, although cone 10/11 was down at the top and middle, the bottom cones only got to nine. After a peak in the peeps this morning, it looks like everything will be fine. My bottom shelf is always full of the runnies… celadons and copper reds, so a cone nine is usually safer than a cone 11. I know those of you who typically pull of 16-20 firing are saying wah! lol!
Anyways, that’s what I’ve been up, not online, not on twitter, not on facebook, not on etsy (can you beleive I haven’t listed anything new in over a month!). But working.
I did get my heads glazed in the electric kiln with a nice weathered bronze. All in all I am pretty happy with them and want to start on some new ones as soon as I get the chance. You’ll notice a small new one I did for experimenting with some surface treatments. The skull I did awhile back was glazed in my favorite shino (Malcomb’s of course!) along with some shino slips and sprayed glazes and fired in the woody yesterday, can’t wait to see that one!
