Another day of potting

Today I made more lids for small 1.5 lb canisters I made yesterday. I also made some 3 and 5 lb pitchers. I got a little carried away with the third pitcher back. It seems to have more hip than belly....
















This is a tow piece vase that I made about 20 min. ago. I really like how it turned out. The base is 7.5 lbs and the neck is 2.5 lbs. I threw the base and then took my weed burner to it to stiffen it up. I then threw the neck on my treadle wheel and added it to the stiffened base. I joined the two together and refined the shape of the neck. I am thinking about adding some handle to this piece but I am not sure. We will see how I feel about that in the morning.
















Anyone who has seen this blog has got to be getting bored of seeing pots that aren't finished.... I know I would. The reason I don't have any finished pieces on here yet is because my electric kiln is not in an area where there is sufficient power so therefore I haven't been able to do any glaze firings. I am however spending the next couple of days at one of my uncles collecting and splitting wood so I can fire my small wood kiln on Sunday or Monday. I have fired this kiln once before but of course I didn't have enough wood to do anything. I am hoping that there will be enough wood to get the kiln up to temp. maybe I will have some pictures of finished pots on here. Hopefully....

Sheridan

Teapots

I did a run of teapots the other day and here is what I came up with. They are all relatively the same except for a few of them that I gave a decorative foot too.














Here is one of the ones with the decorative foot. I left enough clay at the bottow while throwing that I was able to scallop the foot. My fiance thinks that it looks like the teapot from Beauty and the Beast.















I am hoping to be spending tomorrow splitting logs so I can give my test wood kiln another go. I am going to go at it a little bit different this time around but I want to make sure that I have enough wood to even get the kiln to temp.

Sheridan

Today in a nutshell

Today I made some 2 lb. canisters and a couple of tea pots.

Bellow are the canisters. I made a batch of about 400 lbs of clay yesterday and instead of letting it age like any smart person I decided to just jump right in and start throwing it. The clay didn't really respond to well with what I was trying to do but I fought through it anyway. I added some reclaim to the batch when I made it yesterday and that has made the clay slightly plastic but not as plastic as I would like. As you can see the canisters are straight sided as opposed to a bellied jar. I really like the look of straight sided canisters plus the straight sides take up less counter space.














Here are the lids for the Canisters. I try and make all of the lid seats all the same size. It really makes it easy to crank out the lids rather than measuring each individual pot and then making the lid. another good thing about making all of the lid seats the same size is that you dont have to make the lids right while the pots are wet. I made these canisters at about noon today. I couldnt make the lids right away because I had to go pick out a wedding cake but that didnt really matter because like I said I already knew what size to make ALL of the lids.














These teapots are probably the most successful ones I have ever made. I think they have a nice shape and where the spouts are connected they have a really nice seam that isnt over worked. Now all they need to do is pour well and I'm in business.














Till next time....

Sheridan

Random Pics...

Here are some random pictures of pots I have made over the past couple of weeks.

This double bellied pot is going to be a lamp... Hopefully.




















I just made this vase today. I threw the base first using 7.5 lbs. of clay and then I added the neck which was about 2 lbs. of clay.
















I also threw this pitcher today. My pots seem to be getting a little more belly than I am used to having. The reason for this, I think, is that the way I mixed the clay up this time around made it really plastic. I made a test batch of about 20 lbs in a 5 gallon bucket and mixed it to a slurry. I then dumped the bucket into a trough and let it air dry for about a week.
















I fired this test kiln about 2 weeks ago and got it up to cone 7. I only had about 30 lbs. of propane so I knew I wouldn't get all the way to cone 10 but I thought I would give it a shot anyway.
















Here is a picture of the ware rack after I organized it today. It doesn't look like there are many pots here but on the top shelf almost every pot is stacked in twos or threes.

Here's whats going on.

Its been a while since I have made a post. That's because I haven't been really doing a whole lot with pottery lately. My Fiance has a job interview in Chicago in a week or so, so I have been slowing down production just in case we get a call saying we have to pack our stuff up and head out. Besides posting on blogger I spent most of the morning cleaning up the studio and re-organizing my ware rack so that I am able to get more pots store more pots. My electric kiln that I have isn't working as we speak so I am not able to glaze fire or even bisque fire for that matter. That makes things difficult because I am stuck with all of these really fragile pieces of pottery that I cant store anywhere else but the ware rack....

Recently I posted some videos on YouTube of some different pots that I threw yesterday. If you are interested the links are...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JId3gEp2hiE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VCziJY5OhU&feature=channel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uF7QeQ3Dpoo&feature=channel

Let me know what you think. I am planning on making some more video once I get some clay made. I just received an order of about 2000 lbs. of dry clay, but as I mentioned earlier I might not be in this exact spot in a month or so. If anyone in blogger world is in Peoria, IL this weekend I am having another pottery sale so you should stop by. I have mostly the same stuff as my last sale seeing as I haven't had a chance to fire anything new. I am also going to be in two up coming arts and craft shows around the area so hopefully I can get rid of some of my inventory so I can start really throwing again.

Sheridan

Some Random Photos

This past week I have been making a few pots and mostly just getting things ready to try out my reduction kiln converter. These four pictures are just some random pictures of what has been going on lately. This first picture is of a lidded bowl, or sugar bowl. Whatever you want to call it.















These are the ash test glazes for the first firing of the reduction kiln. I have some other tests that I am going to put in there but this is what I mixed up yesterday. They are pretty simple recipes and that's because I am not one of those potters who wants a ton of stuff in my glazes. It starts to get to a point where you are spending to much money on glaze material when there is only 1-2 percent in the glaze. Not worth it. These are all raw glazes and they contain somewhere between 20-30 percent clay. There are three different sets of tests each containing a different clay. The first is just OM 4 ball clay, the second is Ohio Slip, and the third is Redart. The Ohio slip is a clay similar to Albany Slip. For more information go to www.akclay.com. I am hoping I can get at least one good test from each set so I can make a couple of different ash glazes. I am planning on having an amber ash, temmoku, blue ash, greenish ash, and maybe a glossy opaque ash of some sort.
















Here is the Electric kiln reduction converter. I was supposed to get this is 4-6 weeks but about 4 days after I ordered it, it showed up at the front door.
















This is the Converter with the kiln on it. This kiln has another section but I am only using this whole kiln as a test kiln so I don't need a whole lot of room for many pots. I might do a shelf or two but that would be it. I just have to figure out how to work the thing now. The instructions aren't really all that good but I think I will be able to figure it out.





















Cheers.

Wow

Today I put a coat of adobe on the little test wood kiln that I built. I will post some Pictures of the kiln tomorrow. I finished putting the adobe on at 9ish so there wasn't very much light for a good picture. In other news I just found this video on youtube and it is awesome. The URL is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePDqNYcFWno. It is of two Jingdezhen potters throwing huge amount of clay together. Check it out.

Sheridan