I hate cleaning burners......and I have two to pull apart and clean before I can get my glaze firing done. Was hoping the pressure would blow the rubbish out but it didn't happen so the bisque firing took longer then normal. Haven't fired since November so no wonder the rust etc has caused problems. At least its not all four I have to tackle so I shouldn't complain. I did complain though about the gas going up in price - so expensive up here - bought my last bottle in November and there was a price rise then and now its gone up again.
Have been sieving kaolin for my porcelain and putting the little bits of coloured kaolin and rock aside. I should have been cleaning but out came the mortar and pestle to grind it to fines so I can hopefully get a glaze. Kept some of the sand and ground it as well so perhaps I can have a play with it all and get some surprises - or disappointments.
I wonder will he sleep through tonight!!!
2 comments:
Rusty burners aren't a problem I have here...yet( I am tempted to go to gas sometimes!), but damp wood, and removing the accumulating rubbish from the wood heap are my equivalents.
Most impressed with your sieving of kaolin. It is rather nice seeing Kaolin actually looking like clay, rather than a white powder. My Kaolin comes in bags with "Kao Lin product of China" stamped on the sides. Convenient, expensive, but rather uninspiring! Love the colours, is that just iron staining or are there other goodies causing the colours?
Very interesting to see your glazed and unglazed pots in the "Teething" post. If it is of any comfort regarding "the glaringly obvious fault", I did hear (from a friend who was there at the time) about a well know potter who demonstrated how to make teapots, and forgot to put the holes through the body before attaching the spout. It certainly pays not to have too many distractions when assembling pots (or preparing glazes for that matter... I did some most peculiar glaze tests once when I was too tired).
Hope the teething goes well... teeth are demanding little things, they hurt when they appear, and they hurt like mad when they need taking out!
Burners all fixed - spiders weaving their little mass of webs seems to be the problem every time.
I have put a couple of the sieved bits from the kaolin in the kiln so will see what happens. I know a lot of the colourizations are iron but read where 'anatase' (never heard of it before) can cause that purple hue. There are some interesting extras in the bauxite as we had a lot of dust problems last year with a tailings dam construction across the road from housing - lots of meetings with irate residents and then dust monitoring so there was a precise breakdown of the dust collected so who knows what leaches down into the kaolin layer. They are talking about mining mineral sands here so they might prove interesting as well.
Teeth seemed to have settled and thank goodness the sleep has improved - we did manage one night having three hours sleep!
Will post some photos of the experiments if they look ok.
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