Kiln is packed for my first bisque firing

But.... I wasn't sure how high I could stack the bowls from the top of the kiln, so I made this video in hopes some of my friends would help me with the decision to either fire it that way, or to take some out.

So hoping this firing goes well. Since it looks like a few bowls could still be wet, I decided to leave the bowls in the kiln for a few days until I know for sure they are dry, unless.... I do a candling on them like a potter friend recommended.

Just thought you might enjoy seeing the video, so here it is!

My Newest Video

This video shows what the bowl looked like with glaze on, before I fired it, and then after it was fired, with the exception of one bowl I threw in the mix which was greenware.

So I've been at this for 3 months now. I think I've improved greatly. This was my second glaze firing. Stay tuned for more and .... Thanks yall for stopping by!

I surprised myself, making this

I thought I'd post a picture of something I made. My sister was at my house the other day. She said, "Hey, if you ever learn to make one of those sugar and creamer sets you put on your table, I'd like to have one". I laughed at her and said, "Well, maybe someday when I am good enough, I have not seen a video on making those to be able to do them". But, tonight as I was at the wheel, I was thinking about it... thinking about what size I would make. I had about 1 1/2 pds of clay on the wheel at the time, turning it into a cylinder and I thought "hey, maybe I could make a sugar dish... who knows"? And ... so I did.

And here is what it looked like....

I somehow managed to make the shape in the mouth of the jar for a lid and I thought, "Now how in the world will I made a lid"? I have no calipers yet either as the ceramic supplier was out of them.

So, I grabbed a lump of clay and started with a lid.


















I was so amazed I did that! I used one of my quilting rulers to measure the mouth of the jar for the lid, and then measured the lid too. I ended up trimming the lid once it was leather hard and I could try it on the jar because it was a little too wide for the lip of the jar. I was so tickled! I surprised myself with this one.

Then... I had the thought to make the little milk jar... and so I got busy throwing a cylinder again.. and here is the milk jar.

Here is a better pic of the lip of the milk jar.





















It may not be the most pretty, but to me it's pretty cause it's my own creation! This is what I am looking forward to... doing my own thing with clay!

I'll update later today.. I have to get the pics of what it looked like when I got finished. I added a handle to the milk jar and then took my clay extruder and  made some dainty swirly lines around the jars. Looked sort of Victorian if you ask me!

Thanks so much for subscribing, if you have... and if not, please do. If not... thanks yall for stopping by to read my updates!

Kiln Test Complete and Working!

Thought I'd give an update. According to the Skutt manufacturer the other day, he had Chris do some various test on the kiln and we found out the elements were good but the relays were not. So we went and bought 3 new ones. Test fired it last night and I took notes at each segment. The temps exceeded the required amounts each time by only a few degrees. Started at 5:15 and the kiln had reached it's 04 cone temp by 12:27 at 1947 degrees and shut off.

The kiln was not cool enough to lift the lid until around 8pm tonight. It took quite a while for it to cool down, so when it got to around 140 degrees I opened the lid. Of course if there was ware in there, I wouldn't have opened it.

So I went out with my video camera and did a video of the cones in the kiln to see if they coned out at 04 temps and sure enough they did.

Here is the cone on the top shelf

Here is the cone from the middle shelf... and OOPS... I forgot to kiln wash this piece of furniture!

Lesson learned... "don't put anything on top of the furniture unless it's kiln washed first. Well Duh!

And here is the cone on the bottom shelf

And here is all 3 of the cones together

 

For those of you who know anything about testing a kiln, you know you start with one cone lower than the temp you are firing to, and one cone higher. So if you are doing a bisque 04 firing, you would put in a cone 03 for the guide cone which tells you to watch for the firing cone (04) to bend and a 05 cone to make sure it doesn't over fire. Well, my supplier says Ort is in the business of selling cones and really all I needed to do was to put in 3 04 cones to test the temps in the top, middle and bottoms sections of the kiln. I do believe my kiln has passed for the 04 test. From what I am told, it should be at least in 2:00 position. I'm still not absolutely positive on the middle on which is bent over... because it's mounted on the furniture. This tells me that it could have been a blob on my kiln shelf, which of course wouldn't have stuck since there is kiln wash on the shelf. But... the cone could have been in an overly melted stage. I'll test again, but next time it's going to be with the kiln loaded.. and I'm sure things will be just a little different in there.

Thanks for stopping by to see the results of my kiln.

I'll have a video of this as well, shortly on my YouTube channel.

In case you don't have that address it's Muditsallabout

Kiln Test Complete

Really disappointed as I type this, this morning. The kiln fired until 12:00 midnight last night and it only reached the temperature of 1248 degrees and should have been at 1946 degrees. The witness cones in the kiln were still standing straight up and had not bent any either. So this tells us that either there is a problem with the thermocouple or some or all of the elements are bad :(  Either way, we will call Skutt today and let them help us diagnose the problem. Elements can be expensive, but... not as expensive as a new kiln. One way or another, we will get it fixed. I'm not going to worry over it, but I'm just anxious to get my own going so I can experiment with some slips and my own home grown clay.

I saved this to my drafts folder so I didn't have to make another post for today. We called the Skutt Manufacturer today and talked to them. I'm so blessed my husband is so smart! He was able to do exactly what the tech told him to do in order to test the elements and the relays. Come to find out, I have at least 2 relays which are bad. It was suggested that we go ahead and replace all 3. We will be calling the local ceramic shop tomorrow to see if the guy carries the relays there. If they are too expensive there, we'll just order from Skutt.

I will be so happy when we get this all worked out! I'd love to get myself a gas kiln next since I really got into this to make some Crystalline Vases! Stay tuned... I'll be posting some pics of the bowls I got out of the kiln. This is my second batch of bowls. They turned out pretty good, but they look to be underfired. Wait till you see the watermelon bowl... gosh it turned out great enough to eat! lol.

Thanks for stopping by to read my blog. Now, more tomorrow!

My first kiln and first test

Wow, I can't believe it's been 5 days already since I last posted. I've been pretty busy trying to throw some bowls for the Empty Bowls project and I just finished doing some glazing on some bowls. I should be getting those back tomorrow. I am having those fired through "The Arts Council" here in town. I am in high hopes those bowls turned out. I did some really pretty designs on at least 2 of them. Anxious to see if they turned out.

I didn't mention I bought a kiln about a month ago but yes, I did. I paid 450.00 for it.  I bought it "As Is". I never seen it run but I know the furniture which came with it is so worth 450.00 I couldn't go wrong and the inside of the kiln looks brand new. Last night I sanded the shelves off lightly and applied some kiln wash to them. This protects the shelves in case any glazes run over on to them. Today I placed the shelves in the kiln and I also put a "Witness Cone" on each level of my kiln. I'm supposed to be testing them to see if the kiln is actually firing to the program I selected which is a 04 bisque. Well, those are the cones I used. I realized later I should have bought one cooler than what I was firing to, and one hotter. Oh well.... at least with 4 of these 04 cones I will at least know if the kilns heat is equally distributed around the whole kiln.

I'm anxious! We started the kiln at 4:15 this afternoon and it won't be finished until 11:00 tonight. I am just anxious to see if the kiln works properly. If so, I have a gold mine! I didn't put any of my ware in the kiln. I wanted to test it without anything being in there. This way I don't have to worry about my pieces being under fired or over fired in case something goes wrong.

Ok, I'll post again tomorrow or the early hours of the morning and let you know how it went. Oh, I made a video showing what my kiln looks like. It's on YouTube. I'll post the link later or you should be able to view it on my video bar once it comes up. My username there is Muditsallabout. That is because someone had already taken my name Muditis. I have Muditis registered though already as my domain, so I will eventually have the website up!

Thanks so much for subscribing or stopping by! By the way, I love comments :)

Finally got my first glaze pieces on video

When I started this blog and my YouTube Channel I never realized how much work this was going to be. I finished putting the glaze result pics in the presentation on Monday, and then on Tuesday, I spent alot of time on YouTube searching how to take an OpenOffice Impress presentation and turn it into a video. Of course everyone wanted to sell me a program to do this. I was so frustrated by the end of the day. One piece of software was found to have a virus in it. I wasn't surprised at all, considering I don't normally download files from anyone except tucows.com or download.com. By the evening I found ONE YouTuber which was telling some basic things on saving files in PowerPoint to be able to use in Windows Movie Maker. Surprisingly, I was able to finally catch on. I'll spare all the details unless you need to know too. Then I'll be happy to make a post with the directions in it. So then once I got my files into Movie Maker, I added the music. Then I found out that the music ran out. Oh gosh... now I needed to know how to edit the sound file. I looked on the net for a free music editor and found one. I didn't spend so much time on that and you can hear the clip where I added it, but that's ok.. my brain is burned out!

So now I've got my blog up, A presentation video uploaded to YouTube and now I just need to work on one more thing.. "My databases".. showing what colors of glazes I use on my pottery so I can see the results. I'll get better at this as I go along. This took alot of my time though and I haven't thrown in a few days. I miss it so much, but this is the only way sometimes I can get done what I have to get done.

In case you haven't seen my latest video, here is the link! Click the full screen to see in HD format!
In the Beginning of Muditis

I know my ceramics look like a kindergarten, but that's ok, we all have to start somewhere. At least I have a record now and I can look back and see how far I have come. Hope you enjoy the video, and thanks for stopping by!