Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Ninth Class, Tues. Aug. 6th, Firing and Bad Trimming


 The kiln is fireing and This time I'm a puller. That is I have long gloves and tongues and I'm reaching into the red hot kiln and pulling out pottery. The heat is blasting out of the kiln, sweat is pouring down my forehead. Everything is going well till I try to grab a round shaped pot. It starts to roll of the shelf. Luckily Andrew is there with his tongues and saves it before it falls to its destructions. We continue  putting the pots into a trash can filled with news paper shreds. The extremely hot pottery sets the paper on fire. The cans are quickly closed, the oxygen is shut off and whatever is not glazed is chard a flat black. After about five minutes of this I grab the tongues and search through the burning/smoldering paper to find the raku pots; clasp them and dunk them into the water bucket. As soon as Joan has her pots taken out of the kiln she carefully puts horse hair on her pots creating interesting patterns. Unfortunately I didn't have any pottery in this firing. After helping with the clean up, I start trimming the pots I threw the day before. It doesn't go well, I must have thrown them a little off center. I have a great deal of difficulty getting them centered again, and eventually cut through two of them. The planter  is a disaster, I'm only able to save one of them.                                                                                    





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