Snail Scott on mon 18 jul 05
At 01:23 PM 7/17/2005 +0000, you wrote:
>I am relatively new to raku and just built a kiln. It has been fired
twice and both times everything turned black. A nice black kindof like a
leopard, but not what I was hoping for. What am I doing wrong? I fired to
cone 5...
First - what kind of glazes (if any) were you
using? Not something that was supposed to be
black, presumably, but what were you shooting
for actually?
Most raku glazes mature between ^012 and ^06 -
MUCH lower than ^5 - or did you mean ^05?
An unvitrified raku glaze can absorb the smoke
of the post-firing reduction (since it hasn't
gone glassy), and it will turn blackish. So,
it may be underfired like you thought.
With raku, the very fast firing time can mean
very uneven heating inside the kiln, so a
cone may not tell you what you need to know.
Use the peephole to check the glazes themselves.
Unless they are the very dry matte sort, they
should go through a bubbly phase after reaching
red heat, then the bubbles will go away. That's
the sign that the glaze is matured, and you can
go ahead and pull the work out.
-Snail
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