A Long Time Coming

Who could that be coming up our driveway? Kind of looks like...a cement truck!

And thus the twilight of the great basement saga. Is seven months a record for pouring a rectangle of cement? We can finally get the basement closed in, and the house leveled from below, and plumbing, and a BATHROOM!! That is not a BUCKET! Flushingly good times ahead at Windy Ridge!


We also started work on the entry to our gallery this afternoon. My parents salvaged a few deck/porch things from a friend's remodel last year, and one of them happens to make a perfect entryway to our gallery. Or, rather, it will when Joe figures out how to make the legs all the right length. We got the porch up from storage (in the tall weeds) and ready to put into place later this week when friends can make it out to help maneuver it around. Hauling things around with the tractor and chains has its place, but not in finesse work. We've tried.

--c

Gallery update

It was a whirlwind weekend of woodworking. Christy's parents were here both days, and we almost have the gallery put together. Here are the pictures.
The first one is of a pair of (almost finished) shelves for display. You can't see it very well from the picture, but one side is about twice as deep as the other. The narrow side is going to get a slight ledge in the front and be a shelf for dishes and plates to stand upright on.



In the foreground of the next picture is shelving/counter top space for pots. There will be a curtain below with storage for.... whatever. In the background is a table for packing material, promotional material and the like. We are also hoping this acts as a nice visual barrier to separate our private home space from our gallery. The gallery is fairly small, and I need one of those fish eye lens so you can actually see how everything fits together. Maybe when I have more energy I can explain it all. The open space in the upper right hand of the picture is the door way that leads into our living room. The red strips are just strap clamps that I was using to glue the birch plywood onto the other side of the desk, for those of you who were wondering.


This photo is of the smaller of the pair of shelves. With the laptop trying to be a boom box... and leaving something to be desired. We are lucky to have all this cherry wood. My father in law loves two things: wood working and finding bargain wood and tools at auctions and garage sales. He's a good father in law to have in times like these. The cherry came from an auction. It was tucked in a pile of white oak that he picked up for a bargain.
Tomorrow our cement guy comes and we will get ready to pour the basement floor. We're hoping to get the cement truck in and out before our gallery opens next weekend. We still need to get in something of a pathway through the mud pit that we call our yard right now, as well as get a porch/stair to get people up the 18" up to the gallery door. Looks to be a busy week ahead.

Joe

New Clay

Although we did get quite a few nice pots out of this last firing, we didn't get out nearly as many pots as we put in. We had planned on taking a hiatus on making pots for the next couple of months and getting the gallery up and going and start getting our house livable. However there is nothing worse than a gallery that is only half full, so the new plan is to get the gallery up and going in the next week. Then spend a month making pots and fire, probably just the first chamber early June. So in preperation we mixed up some clay today.


We ended up picking this guy from our test clays in the firing.

It's similar to the clay we used in our first firing. We did switch the feldspar to NephSy and slightly lowered the grog to 7%. It still is slightly sandier than I'm used. We'll give it a cycle and see how we like it. I like that it really seems to show the effects of the wood ash and flame. I also like the fact that it didn't bloat!
We'll I'm off to go work on the gallery. We took out some ads last fall saying our gallery would be open in May. Which gives us about exactly a week. I'll try and get a picture of the progress today, I'm pretty excited I think it will look great. We got a bunch of cherry that my father-in-law had cut down and milled up, and are milling that down for counter tops and shelves.
I'll end with a couple of pictures that I promised of the charring effects that I like so much.
Hmm.... it looks like I somehow added the pictures to the top of the post, and not the bottom... oh well.
take care
Joe

A couple more pots

We modified our corn ash glaze a little bit to help it melt at a more reasonable temperature. We realized after our first firing that the corn ash glaze really looked best at cone 11 or hotter. This version seems to be a little more reasonable. Here's a mug with the corn ash glaze, that collected a little ash from the firing.

Here's the corn ash glaze thinly painted over our new red slip. It has a nice kind of 'chun' effect where it's a little thicker. I'm sure you'll be see more of this combination in the future.


Here's our standard clear glaze over the red slip.

This is somewhat of a new decoration for me, I'm always pleased with my self when I come around to a new decoration.

This is obviously not exactly a new decoration for me... kind of an old favorite.
Joe

New Pots

We took a bunch of pictures today outdoors; however the lighting lead to a lot of unfortunate reflections and glares. Here are a few pictures of pots from the new load. I'll post pictures of more pots tomorrow or the next day.

I tried a new pitcher shape this cycle. More based on Medieval jugs. As always with trying new shapes (and really making pots in general) some came out better than others. I thought this one came out pretty well.


A platter of Christy's showing off our new red slip using a local red clay, with a clear glaze over the top.


Finally a picture of a jar from the front of the kiln.
We held the front of the first chamber at top tempature for eight hours. I used a a slight variation of a technique I learned from David Stuempfle to build up a fairly large ember bed, then covered the bottom of all the pots in the front with embers. We then let these embers burn off, then repeated the process.

For those of you who are curious, to build up good embers for this, we stoked several stokes with larger split hardwood, then stoked with heavy oak slabs, slowly working our way down to the last stoke of thin strips of wood. By the end hopefully all the larger wood has broken down into nice "soft" embers, and the small sticks should burn down pretty much right away. So by the end there is a fairly large fluffy pile of embers. At David's we then shoved a large piece of slab wood under the embers and started tossing the embers toward the pots. Here we had too many glazed plates and bowls to really be flinging around large quanaties of embers, so I simply pushed the embers up onto my pots that were lining the firebox. This picture doesn't really show the nice charring that we got on some of the pots up front. I'll take post some pictures of these and post them soon.
Joe

The "Vote for your Bloat" Contest

We had hoped that the bloating would go away with the longer firing. However apparently 48 hours was not quite long enough. This does however offer us this exciting opportunity to offer up our first (and hopefully only) 'Vote for your Bloat' Contest. We've narrowed down the contestants to a select group, so look over your choices and then place your vote by commenting on this post or emailing christysfarm at gmail dot com.

Up first we have "The Hatchery," a lovely platter from the first chamber. Pictures don't really do this one justice. The bloats are large and many on this entry. What's lost in the composition of the bloats is more than made up by size and frequency. In order to prevent something grotesque from hatching out of the bloats on this platter, we smashed it shortly after snapping the photo. Safety first!



Next we have "The Hairy Eyeball," the little bloat that could. This little guy is dwarfed in size by our other contestants, however we in the selection committee feel as though this little guy may represent the single most expressive bloat out of the whole firing. It looks like a sinister eye bursting forth from an otherwise pleasant serving dish.


If the vote for your bloat competition was based purely on aesthetics and composition, we would have to close down the competition as this next number. "Poached Eggs" would win hands down. We chose to use this plate to serve our cheeseball on during last night's bonfire and beer gathering. The cheeseball nestled beautifully between the bloats. Quite remarkable, really.


Last we have "The Prepubescent Teen" who took the motto "quantity not quality" and ran with it. The bloats this little guy managed to produce were quite impressive.

Please feel free to take your time. We certainly had a hard time narrowing down our selection from the vast number of entries, the quality and variety of which were quite overwhelming.

We hope everybody has an opportunity to vote for their favorite bloat.
To recap your are your contestants:
-The Hatchery
-Harry the Hairy Eyeball
-Poached Eggs
And
-The Prepubescent Teen


Keep in mind this is a one time opportunity as we certainly don't ever plan on using pre-mixed clay again, and therefore don't see any other opportunities to hold a competition of this type. Good luck to our contestants and happy voting! We'll provide results early next week. And maybe we'll post some pictures of the good pots from this firing sometime soon, too!

Results Sneak Peek

The good news is that our glazes turned out really well, the unglazed work is lovely and toasty and ashy, and that we should have plenty of work to fill the gallery when we open in two weeks. The bad news is that the commercial clay body we used turned out to have some horrible defects. Check back with us tomorrow for our first (and never to be held again, ever!) Vote for your Bloat contest!

Pictures of the crew

Sorry, we're all a little too tired to write much, but here are pictures of the crew at work.... unfortunately we didn't get pictures of Christy's brother and sister-in-law, but they came out this evening with dinner and helped us to transition into the second chamber.





Even Winks the cat was tired from watching us stoking all day.
Joe

Loadin' in the Rain...

and sleet, and snow! We had a chilly afternoon featuring the wide array of lovely Wisconsin "spring" weather. As far as loading went, we decided that the sleet was preferable to rain or snow (it kind of bounced off the greenware), although Julie and I have red, windburned faces from spending the afternoon being pelted in the face 25 mph winds and ...precipitation. We really need to build a studio that is closer to the kiln. All in due time...

Joe is bundled up in his sexy tan canvas coveralls to spend the night candling the kiln, and Julie or I will relieve him in the early morning. Hope for warmer weather!

**c

A few more loading pictures

We are almost done loading the kiln. We are done with the first and second chambers, and only need to load up what we can in the third chamber. I say "what we can" because we seem to be quickly running out of shelves. Here are a couple of pictures of the loading from the last couple of days.
Julie Jones finishing up the first stack of shelves in the second chamber:


Second chamber all done:

The front of the first chamber. I placed some larger unglazed pots in front of the shelves. I'm hoping with the grates higher up that we can build up some embers at the base of these pots. I really like the look of pots that combine the charring effects of ember beds, along with some fly ash build up.


The top of the front stack. The four unglazed vases on top are clay tests. We are hoping to get a nice clay that will accept fly ash and flash well.

Well, time to finish up lunch and load up the third chamber.
Joe

Loading day one

Well after a long day of loading we treated ourselves to a dinner out. So I'm afraid I'm now too tired to write much... First chamber is almost done loading. I forgot to get a picture of the stack closest to the flue, sorry. Here's what it looks like so far. We should be able to get maybe one more short stack then cap it off, fill in a couple pots in front to catch the embers and then move onto the second chamber.
Joe

last minute kiln work

Time to dust off the old tile saw. For anybody who is looking to build a kiln I would certainly recommend looking into getting a saw. We got this little number:

The cheapest tile saw you can get from harbor freight, along with the extended warranty. Good thing to since we are on tile saw number four (Luckily the good people at harbor freight didn't seem to concerned with our repeated visits with broken tile saws).
Anyways, the project for today was reorganizing the grates for the first chamber. Last firing we had two main problems with the main grate system. Firstly, during the first part of the firing, we like to keep the stoking to below the grates until around 1400F. However during this period embers started to build up in the channel below the grates at around 1100F. With no where for the embers to go the temp stalled and we were forced to start stoking above the grates. So for this firing we are making room for the embers to spread to underneath the two side grates during the early stages of the firing.
The second change was due to the lack of ash we had on our pots in the front of the kiln. We had surprisingly little ash on our pots after a 48 hour firing. Most of our pots are decorated and glazed, so don't really need any ash. However we always have some unglazed pots that we put in the first stack of shelves and always hope for some nice flashing and a little ash build up on those. So we have also raised the grates up 5" (closer in height to the ware chamber) and closed the space between our grate bricks from 2" to 1.25".
The front corner with the fiber is an area that, due to the shape of the front chamber never has wood stoked onto it. So we've covered it with bricks, then fiber, tomorrow we will seal it all over with a clay/sand mixture. That way when we open up the side air inlets we know the air is reaching the grates where we want it.
Julie Jones arrived safe and sound from NC today, and tomorrow we'll all start loading the first chamber.
Good times
Joe

stoke hole plugs 2.0

Here are the new stoke hole plugs (along with a couple of larger pots that still have a lot of drying to do). I decided to keep the same shape as last time. The clay is incredibly groggy (well groggy, and "saw dusty")when compared to the last batch, so I'm hoping they won't warp much at all.
As for the recipe I ended up slaking down forty pounds of the old clay (50/50 EPK kyanite) then added ten more pounds of EPK (we didn't have any fire clay at the studio.... go figure) along with ten pounds of coarse grog. I then tried to estimate out and add one third sawdust by volume. After this mix dried enough to use I found it pretty lacking in plasticity, to the point I was having trouble just keeping together to wedge. So I added a little bit of wet sagger clay from last cycle, maybe about a third. So the math gets a little fuzzy and convoluted, but as far as I figure the end recipe looks something like this:
43 EPK
33 Kyanite
10 Grog
add 2/9ths sawdust by volume.

We'll see how this works. I can tell you one thing though, it's a little painful to throw. I ended up pounding the lump of "clay" into a ring with a flat base instead of opening it, then centering and throwing exclusively with a sponge in one hand and a rib in the other (using almost no water as per Alex's suggestion). Hopefully it will work well.
You can also see in the picture I used a little bit of the clay to make a plug for our blow hole in the first chamber (which we cast into the key using a plastic cup. Our first firing we left this open while firing the second chamber and ended up cooling the first chamber a little more quickly than we would have liked (we also had a little bit of dunting from pots underneath the blow hole). So we'll certainly close it up tight this time around.
that's all for now, just finishing up some pots and trying to figure out what needs to be done as far as kiln prep goes.
Joe

Wind Power

When I hear of people objecting to wind power because it obstructs the view, I want to invite them to have a beer on our (future) back porch and watch the Cobb turbines spin. They are ten miles west of us, and we have a lovely view of electricity being generated on clear days like today. By the time we have an actual back porch, we may also have a small turbine of our own.

We are fortunate to live near the Midwest Renewable Energy Association, an organization that offers, among other things, workshops on diy small wind systems. How fun would it be to watch your electric meter spin backwards??? Especially after paying the power company $1200 to move two lousy wires during the house move! (Not that I'm bitter. I am hoarding my bitterness for Charter Cable, who billed us $1300 for moving one wire. And I have witnesses to prove that all they did was lift one portly man up in a cherry-picker bucket. He literally raised the wire up with his shoulder, smoking a cigarette the entire time. His co-workers read the newspaper, and a sipped on an enormous coffee, respectively. Then they joined the house parade and gawked for 1/2 hour while the house movers struggled to get the house into the driveway. When I called the company to complain, the manager told me we were lucky the bill was so low, given all the "prep time," and the fact that they only billed us for two workers instead of three. Yes, what a steal. )

But I digress. It's spring, and I can't wait to start taking advantage of the blustery wind. I have heard that small wind turbines are loud. Anyone out there had experience with this? By the time we can afford one, though, they will probably be quiet as a whisper!

c

Well,... I think I'll stick by my previous statement

Remember when I said spring was on the way, and the grass was starting to look a little bit green? Well the grass has given up it's hint of green for something a little lighter in hue:


Spring must still be on the way though right? I mean it's April after all.

Well in happier news we are quickly approaching our firing date. I think I need to stop making pots some where in the middle of this week. Which is good since we are quickly running out of space (more shelves are high on the pottery to-do list) We are going to start loading the kiln Saturday. Hopefully start firing a week from this Tuesday.
In even happier news, our good friend and potter Julie Jones is going to drive up from North Carolina with a car load full of pots to help us with our second firing. Looks like we'll be firing the third chamber after all! Yeah Julie!
I'll close with a picture of a two piece pot that I just finished. My Uncle put in a request for a larger pot so I've been making some two piece pots, hopefully they'll come out of the kiln looking good.



I'm a little messy with the slipping and glazing when it comes to larger pots...
Joe