Martin Rice on wed 26 may 04
Hi, All:
It's been quite some time since I've written. Hope some of you still
remember me, the struggling self-teaching, would-be potter in the jungle of
Costa Rica. I certainly remember all the help so many of you generously gav=
e
me.
I have not touched clay since last August, almost a year now. The reason fo=
r
that sad state of affairs is that we decided to sell Casa Pac=EDfica where we
lived for two years and move to another part of the country and build
another house. So during all this time we've been living in a rental house
with all our things in storage, including all my pottery equipment.
But now the house is almost finished (we should be in by June 15) and
yesterday they began construction of my pottery studio. Quite exciting. For
quite a while I was only getting the ClayArt digest and just giving it a
quick skim. For the last couple of months, however, I've been back on
individual emails and reading everything (or almost everything) with great
care.
This reading makes me realize how much of the little bit I learned has
already gone away. But I did keep good notebooks and have built up a great
file of all the terrific replies I got to all the questions I sent to the
list. I'm sure that it won't take me nearly as long to get to where I was
(which wasn't very far) this time.
I'll still be facing a lot of the same supply problems, that is, getting
ingredients for clay and glazes. I had developed, with the help of my
friends, a low fire (^04) white clay body that I was mixing myself. The red
clay that's available for sale here is also low fire and very rough and
hard. The white I mix is much easier to work with.
In retrospect I feel that I made a big mistake with the kiln I had built
here. There are no kilns for sale in Costa Rica, and the cost of having one
shipped here was simply outrageous. So I found an engineer who knew about
these things and he built me a nice kiln. But I knew so little at the time,
that I didn't pay much attention to the maximum cone temp it would work at.
Turns out that it's just ^5 (theoretically it's ^6, but he said I probably
didn't want to work it regularly at that temp), which is really seems weird
to me given that it seems most people are working at ^6 and ^10 except for
the low fire folks. And I can continue to be a low fire person, but I'd sur=
e
like to be able to work higher.
Anyway, that's where we are currently. As I begin again in a couple of
months (I can hardly wait!), I'm sure you'll be hearing more of me.
One productive thing I did do during these last 10 months is finish the boo=
k
about Costa Rica, which I began writing three years ago. It ought to be
available in four or five months. I'll let everyone know when it comes out
along with the URL of a companion web site.
Regards,
Martin
Santiago de Puriscal, Costa Rica
pdp1@EARTHLINK.NET on wed 26 may 04
Hi Martin,
While this line of speculation would be better addressed by
those wiser in the ways of Kilns than I...
I wonder if you could simply line the interior of your Kiln
with some 1/2 or so Kaowool, and then get it past ^5 with no
danger to it's bricks...
Or was there some other reason for it's temperature ceiling?
Phil
el v
----- Original Message -----
From: "Martin Rice"
Hi, All:
(snip)
In retrospect I feel that I made a big mistake with the kiln
I had built
here. There are no kilns for sale in Costa Rica, and the
cost of having one
shipped here was simply outrageous. So I found an engineer
who knew about
these things and he built me a nice kiln. But I knew so
little at the time,
that I didn't pay much attention to the maximum cone temp it
would work at.
Turns out that it's just ^5 (theoretically it's ^6, but he
said I probably
didn't want to work it regularly at that temp), which is
really seems weird
to me given that it seems most people are working at ^6 and
^10 except for
the low fire folks. And I can continue to be a low fire
person, but I'd sure
like to be able to work higher.
Regards,
Martin
Santiago de Puriscal, Costa Rica
Martin Rice on thu 27 may 04
Hi Phil:
Actually, I'm not sure about the temperature ceiling at all. I need to call
the guy and ask him. I just always assumed that it had something to do with
the elements, but I guess I just didn't really have any basis for thinking
that.
Martin
Santiago de Puriscal, Costa Rica
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