Post #467986 by MadDogMike on Thu, Jul 9, 2009 9:04 PM

Thanks Babalu and 4WD. The Armless Headhunter is drying for about an hour a day, then back in the bag for the moisture to "equilibrate". I wanted to name him "Gimme Head" but my wife said NO!

Yes, you read that right - SEMI success. I made a couple of new "Vanuatu Jungle Fowl" test plates, this time out of Soldate 60 clay. S60 is a high fire clay suitable for Raku, has better thermal shock properties than the low fire white I used before. Both survived the Pit of Despair without breaking :) Better than the 1 out of 10 with the other clay.

The square plate was coated with a natural red slip and the design carved down the light-colored clay beneath (sgraffito). The fronts of both plates had some dark deposits that I don't care for. With so many variables in a pit fire, it's hard to tell exactly what caused the deposits. May have been pitch in the pinecones, or maybe the few handfuls of salt I threw on the fire. At any rate, the back of the plates turned out so much better than the fronts. The round one is the plate back, that's the look I was going for with the brown & grey swirls & flashes. The front of the plates were burnished and the backs weren't, maybe your theory is right Bill?

So back to the slab roller for more test plates. Ralph Nader said "Your best teacher is your last mistake"