Post #377576 by Babalu on Thu, May 1, 2008 10:36 PM

Hey Robin...whoa, is it nice to be back!

I might have let this bowl dry out a little quicker, but I knew I still needed to build the bird heads when I got back from the trip so I wrapped her up tight before I left. She seems to be drying out pretty evenly. Honestly, I have no clue how this low fire clay will react to this design? If I were using the cone 6 clay with grog, that I normally use for sculpture, there would be no worries.

For those of you that might be following along that don't understand the whole drying out thing that Robin and I are talking about...

When you make something out of clay that has areas that are thicker than other areas, the thinner areas will tend to dry faster than the thicker areas do. The thin area shrinks..the thick area does not...this causes cracking in the clay. If you dry the piece out slowly the work will dry more evenly. The more sculptural clays with grog or sand in them tend to be much more forgiving with the whole thick and thin area thing.