Kristin on wed 25 jun 03
I've decided to not bother Karen on this one; I think
she needs a break from questions right now. Also I'm
guessing someone already knows about this and I just
missed the info.
Has anyone heard/seen how the birthday-emptying of the
wood kiln turned out? All that stoking, watching and
learning -- I'm just dying to see how it all turned
out.
- Kristin, who discovered a fatal flaw this morning.
I've spent a couple hundred dollars ordering all the
necessary supplies to switch my ^6 electric to a ^10
gas. Had everything lined up and ready for this
weekend's potter's pyromania party before I realized
-- I forgot to order the cones. ^6 won't help much in
gauging a ^10! Anyone close to Springfield, IL, have
a few to spare?
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karen terpstra on thu 26 jun 03
Hi Kristen and others who have been inquiring.
My birthday unloading after the conference was a success! No, that
doesn't mean 100% success rate of pots from the kiln, although we do
have some great pots. The greatest thing from this firing was the
learning experience from tests and a few new things we tried.
Our firing went extremely well considering all of the factors. We had
crew who fired it for the first time and they did a wonderful job in
spite of having a difficult time reading it because we lost the crucial
cone pack in the front center during the first few hours. Hence, it
fired too hot and melted a front shelf. We lost some pots in that area.
However, firing that hot gave us color on other work that I wouldn't
ordinarily see. Dark, dark brown on iron bearing clays with touches of
gold flashing like Rob Barnard's stuff. (hate to be a name dropper but I
always wondered how he got that stuff.) And, we got crystals from longer
cooling from a hotter temperature that we normally don't achieve. The
flashing on the porcelain and light stoneware was very intense.
This time we loaded from the floor up to accommodate tumble stacking and
to heat up the floor. Students and I fire 75% functional work so we
shelve everything and have it 1/2 brick off the floor. We had to lower
the grate to heat up the floor on this firing. That worked but it would
cause excessive wear and tear on the floor if we fired that way all the
time. I'm not into repairing...
The extended firing from 36 to 48 hours was difficult to determine how
much just that affected the results since we had the other above
mentioned variables.
I learned a lot myself from this firing and tried things I had thought
about doing but just hadn't got around to it. Now I can go on with fine
tuning and know a bit more about what to do and what not to do for
different types of work. It was a bit naive of me to think I could tell
a crew in five minutes how to fire the kiln and then play hostess to a
workshop at the same time. Duh. Anyway, there is lots of work I'm
extremely happy with and having it photographed on Friday. I'll try to
get something to Mel's clayart webpage soon. My school webpage will be
updated next month and I will let you know about it on clayart. Some of
it may appear in Nils and my collaboration article that's going to CM
this summer.
The regional conference was a great thing. It will continue! (in other
regions) I'm finally recovered. Nils stayed here another week so we
could work on a life size sculpture of a horse and female figure. We
did some drawing and worked on our book "Playing Hard". Then I made a
trip down to Iowa to see my parents since dad's been in the hospital.
(He's doing fine now) Things are back to normal.
Happy Firings,
Karen Terpstra
La Crosse, WI
>Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2003 12:44:42 -0700
>From: Kristin
>Subject: How did the La Crosse wood firing go?
>I've decided to not bother Karen on this one; I think
>she needs a break from questions right now. Also I'm
>guessing someone already knows about this and I just
>missed the info.
>Has anyone heard/seen how the birthday-emptying of the
>wood kiln turned out? All that stoking, watching and
>learning -- I'm just dying to see how it all turned
>out.
>- Kristin,
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