During Christmas Break I was trying to finish throwing a few items on the wheel, then bisque fire, glaze, and then glaze fire everything in about a week. Though I had no team of pointy-eared short people dressed in red and green, I got everything finished up in time for Christmas. I think I glazed the whole load in about a day and a half. Still using the dip-the-brush-in-the-glaze-and-paint-the-glaze-onto-the-bisqueware method which is ridiculously slow but didn’t seem quite as tedious this time. Probably because the glaze thickness on each piece was directly proportional to my patience and time left before Christmas. As in “I made some of the glaze really thin to save time.” This resulted in some of the pieces having a different result than I had gotten before. Some had different colors and some were just a less glossy finish. Most of them turned out okay, just a little different than expected but a few I want to re-glaze or re-fire. Below you can see some of the finished pieces I pulled out of the last load.

I gave away a lot of these pieces, especially the mugs, as Christmas gifts. I also gave away a few items from the last load that I fired. I got some positive feedback and haven’t heard of any handles falling off or mugs shattering.

As I was shooting the photos of these pots I experimented with a Circular Polarizer filter.  It was a cheap filter but it was interesting to find out how much I could control the reflection.  On some of the bigger items I took two photos with different Polarizer settings and then combined them in Photoshop to get a pretty good result.  Now I just need to upgrade my gray Walmart fabric to a gradient backdrop so the wrinkles won’t show up behind the pots in the photos.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I decided to finally put up some pictures of the ceramic ware that I finished a couple months ago.  (See the bisque fired pots).  I got around to taking some photos a week or two ago using my homemade photo studio.  I shot everything really quick so some of the pictures aren’t exactly outstanding….  But on with the show!

I have lofty hopes of giving some sort of recap on the past few months in which I have been doing almost everything except updating the blog….  Maybe by Christmas.

Amaco warm brown stoneware.  Mostly wheel thrown.  Mugs, bowls, jugs, etc.

As you can probably tell by the picture there is a lot of glazing to do in my near future.  Something that you might be able to infer: the new outlet that my brother installed didn’t catch on fire or melt like the old one so the first firing after Operation Upgrade was a success.  The cord to the kiln got a little warm but I turned the fan on and everything went well.  It’s a good thing because my brother (and his wife) are in Beijing getting settled in to their apartment and getting “orientated” to do some teaching.

Well, I better get to work.

As you can tell by the picture, I’ve been pretty busy in the clay studio lately.  The past couple weeks I’ve been cranking out some wheel thrown items when I haven’t been in class or on the computer.  I worked on a bunch of different mug forms for a week or two and recently I’ve made some large bowls and jugs/vases.  I really wanted to try some different handle ideas because I feel like handles have been the most neglected part of my arsenal.  I felt I never really mastered pulling handles so I rarely enjoyed or even used the skill.  While I was making all the mugs I decided it was a good time to, in the words of Nike, “just do it.”  After pulling handles for most of the mugs I can tell that I have improved dramatically.  Sometimes I even enjoy it.

On a somewhat related note I added two more shelves to the drying shelves that I already had.  Now I can cram almost twice as much stuff onto the shelves to dry.

My brother and his wife came down a little while ago to hang out with us before they leave.  (At the beginning of August they’ll be in a little place called… China!)  My brother was nice enough to put in another light and switch down in the basement and he replaced my kiln outlet in the garage which overheated the last time I fired.  Sometime this week I hope to start loading the kiln for a bisque fire.

It works!  In my last post I described how I made a version of the SuperChuck.  A couple days ago I got to try it for the first time.  I threw a nice vase form and it turned out to be the perfect candidate to trim in the chuck.  The black shelf liner material I used provided enough grip and I trimmed the bottom of the vase in no time.  You can see an “in progress” shot and then a picture of the finished pot next to the chuck.

I only wish that I would have made the chuck a little taller because the other vase/bottle that I threw had a neck that was a little long for the chuck.  I got around it by wadding up some of the extra shelf liner to make the chuck thinner in the middle so the shoulder of the pot would have a place to rest.

A while ago I got an email from one of the ceramics newsletters that I’ve subscribed to and it had a video of the “Superchuck”.  In a nutshell, the device is attached to the wheel and used to trim the bottom of vessels with narrow openings or delicate rims (which would prevent them from setting upside down on the wheel).  It looked pretty convenient and not terribly hard to make so I decided to give it a try.  That was a few months ago….  I would like to think that the slow process was more about taking my time and getting it just right but that wasn’t the case at all.  The process could have been shortened quite drastically but work and graduate classes and track season got in the way a bit.

I threw the main form a few months ago and maybe a month ago I glued that to a spare bat with Liquid Nails.  Then a few weeks ago I started testing some material to glue to the chuck to prevent the pots from slipping as they rotate.  The video suggests neoprene but I would have had to order it online and I didn’t want to invest too much in case I never use this thing more than once.  I finally decided to try “Shelf Liner” material.  Yeah, the stuff you line shelves with…  It was pretty cheap and it seemed to have the attributes that I was looking for.  I measured it out and cut it and then glued it to the chuck with Krazy glue.  It seems to be on there pretty tight.  And the material seems to offer pretty good grip.  As soon as I throw something decent, I’ll trim it with this “Superchuck” and see if mine works as well as the one in the video.  I’ll even try to remember to post my results here.

This is actually old news…  but the large ceramic pieces that I’ve been working on are complete.  I was asked to create a bathroom sink by a family that is building a new house.  I had never thrown anything so large on the wheel before but I was excited to try.  The first few attempts turned into large bowls because they weren’t big enough (mostly because I didn’t start with enough clay).  I finally got the diameter that I wanted but then the shape wasn’t quite right and the bottom was too thin.  On my fourth or fifth attempt I finally got a shape and size that I liked.  Then I made an extra just to be safe.  I did some measuring on a store-bought sink and then calculated for shrinkage and cut a hole for the drain.  After bisque firing, glazing, and glaze firing the hole was almost the perfect size.  I don’t know much about drains or plumbing but I hope the installation goes smoothly.  Below you can see a few photos of the finished products.  The sink is about 15 in. in diameter.  The bowl is probably closer to 12 in.

As you can see I’m a little closer to where I want to be as far as photographing my ceramic pieces.  I also got to try out my new tripod that I got for Christmas.  I think I pulled the finished pieces out of the kiln in mid February but I’ve been busy working on the Ligonier Elementary yearbook for the past few weeks.  Last weekend I rearranged my clay studio and put up some more shelves.  Be on the lookout for some pictures…

In my previous post I mentioned that I glaze fired another load just before Christmas.  It had a lot of small items that I used mostly for testing glaze combinations.  I’m starting to get some combos that I like.  So far I like combining Pam’s Blue (Coyote), Red Gold (Coyote), Textured Turquoise (Amaco), Temmoku (Amaco), and Blue Rutile (Amaco) in various ways.  If I can talk my wife into it I want to order some larger quantities of a couple glazes so I can do some dipping.  That way I don’t have to spend half my life painting 3 coats of glaze onto each piece with a brush.  Here is a picture of all the goods:

I took a little break from the clay studio but now I’m back and working on something a little larger.  If it actually turns out I’ll put up some pictures.

Merry Christmas to your eyes.  Check out the photos of the new ceramic items that I just pulled out of the kiln.  If you’ve been keeping score at home you probably realized that I had a lot of glazing to do approximately one week ago.  Well, by “a lot” I meant “so much that I might never want to glaze anything again”.  You see, I spent most of the day and all night Saturday and into the early morning Sunday doing nothing except glazing bisqueware.  The good news is that I ordered five new glaze colors recently so I got to try them out. 

I fired the kiln starting Sunday at around 1:15 and it finished 8 hours later.  It cooled down Sunday night and Monday while I was at jury duty.  Of the new glazes that I ordered I really like the Temmoku and Textured Turquoise from Amaco and the Red Gold from Coyote.  Here are a few pictures:

If I can pull it off again, I hope to glaze another load and have it fired by Christmas.  Or Groundhog day….

Well, here is my post for the month.  I’ve been pretty busy since the last update.  I finished the class that I was taking at IUSB and started coaching the 4th grade girls basketball team.  I’ve also been busy down in the clay studio.  This past weekend I bisque fired a whole load of random stuff that I’ve accumulated over the past few months.

As you can see I have a lot of glazing to do.  I hope to get some glazed and fired before Christmas.  Some of these things could make some good Christmas gifts.  I also bought a few new glazes not too long ago.  I’ll post a few pictures when I actually get them glazed and fired.