Alice Chittenden on thu 28 jan 99
Hello,Reid...... In response to your friends query about firing
self-hardening clay my advice would be absolutely not. Now I'm not an
expert on these clays and granted different companies may have different
formulas but I have witnessed the results of one such firing. The year I
began teaching part-time at a local middle school the full time art
teacher asked me if I would come up with a clay lesson for our classes.
Most of the students had very little clay experience so I showed them
how to make animal sculptures. We let them dry and loaded the kiln.
Since I was only there for part of the day it fell to the other teacher
to fire the kiln. She told me that she hadn't fired a kiln for awhile
and could I recommend a firing schedule. I suggested that she turn the
bottom element on low for one hour the afternoon before the firing to
insure that everything was dry. I came to school two days later and she
told me that everything had blown up. From the one hour preheat! I knew
something wasn't right and thought maybe she was exaggerating but on
opening the kiln I saw that everything was indeed in smithereens. I had
never seen clay behave this way. She had told me it was terra cotta. I
hadn't doubted her because even though I wasn't impressed with the clay
it LOOKED like terra cotta.
Suddenly I knew. I asked her if it was possible that this clay wasn't
meant to be fired and sure enough that was the case. She hadn't used
clay for some time and didn't remember she had both self-firing and
regular clays.
Sorry I can't suggest an alternative, Alice Chittenden
P.S. The kids weren't upset- they got to work with clay twice.
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