Thru-hikers and glazes

Franklin is starting wake up for the spring with snowbirds and tourists coming back. As a result more people are starting to come by the Christy's art shop and today got to chat with an older AT thru-hiker. He was probably in his late fifties and was a little banged up so he was taking a few days off in Franklin to rest. His wife was mailing him sections of 'War and Peace' along the way. She would bind up small (and therefore light) sections of the book and mail them to him along he way. Pretty neat.

Also, we mixed up bigger batches of glaze and fired a kiln load. The good news is that we reproduced the colors of the glazes. The bad news is that where the application was a little thick or thin it really showed. I took the quality control hammer to most of them and kept the ones that didn't have many problems. The planter that I posted a week or so ago turned out really good.

First Evening on the Tuck

We made our first outing on the Tuckasegee yesterday after work. I missed more than I caught, which is pretty typical. Christy hooked a nice brown, but it broke her off before we could get it landed. There were several hatches and the fish were feeding off the top.

AT Hike, Fly Fishing

Saturday we did another section of the AT: Wayah Bald to Tellico Gap. It was a fairly easy hike and not too long (9.5 mi), but since we haven't hiked a ton recently I was more than ready for the end of the hike by the time we reached it. We have been day hiking sections of the AT by leaving a car at both ends.  A couple things were interesting. One, we hiked through a long section that had been burned by the forest service in a controlled burn about a week beforehand. The whole place smelled like a camp fire. Secondly, we came across an "Angel Dome". A retiree had setup a huge orange dome that seated maybe 8 -10 people. He was giving shelter, hot dogs, cokes, etc to thru hikers. He was a great guy and though he offered me a coke my conscious wouldn't allow it since I had one in the van not 5 miles away. He had been there about 2 weeks and had over 180 folks come through. He was at Burningtown Gap which is roughly 180 or so miles from the start of the AT. A few thru hikers I saw in the area had been on the trail about 2 weeks. By that time a hot dog and coke are pretty nice. Here is what the dome looked like:

Sunday we did our first fly fishing of the season. We headed up the the SMNP in between church services and fished a couple hours. It was nice and we both managed to keep from getting skunked Christy had a brown and I took a brookie. We had thought about going to the Tuck which is stocked, delayed harvest, and nationally renowned - and about 15 minutes from our house - but we both like the solitude of fishing in the park for wild trout even though it means fewer and smaller fish.

Potter's Mark

Recently I had a potter's mark (  aka "chop" ) created by ClayStamps.com. I designed the chop in Photoshop and sent it to be created. It works great. I was worried that the clay would get stuck in it, but that doesn't happen at all. I snapped the following photo after marking on one of the pots I trimmed tonight.

Tea bowls

Some time ago, when I was trying to decide on a type of clay, I bought 50 lbs of brown clay. I have since decided on a buff clay (Ellen Buff clay from Highwater Clays in Asheville, NC).  So the past few days I have been trying to use up the brown. The problem is that if I try to work with both types of clays the equipment (bats, etc) would have to be cleaned up really good each time I change types. This doesn't really make any sense for me, so I am just going to use one type for now.

Anyway, I have been making these "tea bowls". I guess they are really an americanized version of the tea bowl. Meaning of course, that they are a lot bigger. Japanese tea bowls are really pretty small - bigger than a shot glass and smaller than a mug. The ones I have been making have roughly the consistency of a good sized mug. The "Big Gulp" version of a tea bowl I guess. Odds are that they will all end up as driveway fill at some point.  While I was at it I made a planter and saucer. If the clay looks multi colored at all it is simply that it is dryer in some areas. They are both made with the same clay.

Glaze Test Results

We mixed up a few batches of glazes this weekend and I just opened the kiln from the firing. Overall I was really happy. There was only one glaze that I didn't care for much. Also, I adjusted one of the recipes I had very slightly and was very pleased. I don't know much yet about the glaze chemistry but I did know that generally speaking copper gives you green in oxidation. I just upped the amount of copper and I did get the slightly more green I was looking for. Of course I am only basing my "more green" notion on a picture of the original recipe. It could be that there would have been virtually no difference at all between my recipe and the original. The pictures do a poor job of showing glazes. The appear much different in person.  Below are a couple pictures from the test. The isolated test tile is my favorite. Also, I included a photo of the "green" glaze before it was fired. It is amazing that it starts off red and ends up coppery green. I tested many combinations of glazes and if time permits I will post more photos.

ITC and Glaze

I coated the kiln and the shelves with ITC 100-HT. This stuff is really expensive and nobody (except ITC) knows what's in it. What a deal! Seriously, it protects the kiln furniture from the intense heat and also protects the kiln interior. It is best sprayed with a sand blasting gun, but since I don't have one I had to brush it. It is really gritty and almost impossible to get even. Hopefully it still works ok. I fired the kiln with furniture to cone 04 to set everything.

Also, my glaze materials arrived last night. I am in the process of sorting them out and finding containers for each of the chemicals. The stuff can kill you over time if you breathe it, so I strapped on the respirator. Hopefully this weekend I will find time to mix up some glaze tests.

Maiden Voyage

Friday night was the maiden voyage for the new kiln! It is an Olympic 1823whe with the Bartlett electronic controller and an Orton Ventmaster vent.. Christy and I picked it up a week or so ago and Dave from church came and wired it up for us. Having never fired a kiln at all I was a little nervous about the whole thing, but nothing went wrong and all was well. The kiln vent worked great too, as the only thing I smelled was the "new kiln" stuff that comes from the first time everything gets heated up. No sulphur fumes from the ware being bisqued. Another thing I didn't know was the the bisqued pots would be pink. The will be a buff color when glazed fired.



It was pretty cool to open a peep hole and see everything glowing orange at about 1900f degrees. Here are the photos:

This one is a shot looking at a firing cone through a peep hole.