Reference to the last post; my kiln is on its own mission to give me a nervous breakdown. I have had a series of near misses in the kiln again, this time; “Shaky Firing Number 2”.
In the kiln was this pot, an important piece that I really needed to get out in perfect condition. There were a lot of hours racked up in “Ray Gun Jar”, particularly on the painting front.
The initial problem was that the first firing aborted due to a power cut in the village that took out everything for about 10 hours. This is never a problem on the biscuit firing cycle as I can re-start it. At glaze level this would spell a definite wipe-out, no one is restarting a glaze kiln and emerging pretty.
The repeat of the first firing was set off a few days later, but this program over-fired (see last post) and so I had broken all the rules again for that first biscuit firing which should be lower than the glaze firing and never exactly the same as in it was in this case, reaching 1100, with a 20 minute soak for good measure. The reason for this is so that when I come to the last stage of glazing the pot in the liquid soupy suspension of glaze the porosity of the surface enables a perfect covering of the surface; even and fine. This jar was over fired and with a high ping/ring when flicked with finger and thumb and about a porous as a rubber tyre.
My method is to dip glaze by holding by the foot dangling over a big bucket, take a deep breath and down it goes, count to 3 and out it comes, covered in powdery white glaze. Well, I went ahead and did it, after all it worked last time and low and behold it did come back up covered in white powder. I can only think the ambient temperature here in Granada of 41 degrees Celsius must have something to do with this, it is tinder dry out there and a loaf of bread becomes desiccated bread in about half an hour if left out!
So, result….. bloody perfect pot! 36 centimetres tall, 15 inches. Views all around the pot below.
