Friday, July 1, 2011

Item #3: Unload kiln

I love when my to-do list goes like this:

  1. Clean house
  2. Walk dogs
  3. UNLOAD KILN!!! :)
  4. Deliver pots & get paid
Here's what the loading looked like. This time there are some student pots in the kiln; it's the first firng that I've finally felt sufficiently confident of a good result to do so. In the three-quarters full photo, you can see some tiny pieces occupying the spaces between pots. These are refrigerator magnets. After I realized how very expensive propane was going to be, I started trying to figure out ways to increase the yield of the firing without raising prices. I may still have to raise prices but it does help to turn each little, inevitable space into a three-dollar bill. Or something like that. You can also see a couple of re-fires; I'm not enamoured of refiirng, generally, if the problem is just that you don't like the piece, as in my experience a second glaze firing will do little to improve it. In this case the problem was only that the pieces were a tad underfired, but I could see that they were good pots, with nice color & sheen. Just needed to get a little warmer.




Anyway. I am off to clean house & walk dogs, so I can get to #3 on my list. Most of the pots in this kiln already have destinations - how nice! photos later.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Sounds like a great day...can't wait to see the finished pots :)

You are brave- it looks like that cup is only part way on a shelf (or do my eyes decieve me?!)

Lori Watts said...

There is a mug on the second shelf that is overhanging a little bit - eventually I will buy new shelves that use the space more efficiently! But for now I overhang pots every firing with no ill effects. [Knocks wood]