Post #764787 by danlovestikis on Tue, Jun 7, 2016 8:41 PM

hang10tiki it's really fun to have someone not only read my words but to dub them a favorite. Thank you so much.

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While working on the Sacramento Crawl mug I also cast a few other things. They dried first and now it was time to sand them.

Necklaces, the Swap mug and a huge bowl.

I carved my name on the bottom of the bowl while sanding.

My sanding supplies are a soft support for the item, mesh sandpaper and clay tools for carving. Now it the time to fine tune before firing.

When I finished Dan got out the air compressor to blow off the dust.

I was looking forward to loading all of the necklaces into the big bowl.

When you bisque fire everything is able to touch each other.

So I kept stacking in the necklaces in layers until

they were all in the bowl.

Now I filled the bottom shelf of the kiln with the bowl, the swap mug and some Moai that I'd made.

This is the first load of crawl mugs to sand. I took them outside and you saw how many places I had to sand to finish each one.

Dan again blew off the dust.

He had to get behind the lower leaves and at the same time not hit the bent leaves.

He did an excellent job and into the kiln they went to be fired.

I fire with a preheat only if I am uncertain that they are completely dry. If there is any moisture they will crack.
I also fire using a slow ramp of 13.5 hours because this also will prevent cracking.
I have a hold of 25 minutes at the end so that at maximum temperature the clay will shrink as much as it can.
This prevents the glaze from popping off the ceramic when firing.

Cheers, Wendy