Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Say no to crack[ed pots]

The frowning crack on the pot below says it all. Of the 4 large Onggi style pots I bisque fired (with about a 20 hour candle) exactly 4 of the pots cracked. Between the clay body, speed of drying, application of slip, and coil joining technique, I feel that I can make some changes to fix this problem in the future. If anyone has any advice on a clay recipe that may be up for the rigors of the onggi technique, I'm all ears. Fortunately I have plenty of other pots to fire in the wood kiln this weekend. Went down to the kiln and glazed some pots today and plan to load tomorrow.



A big thanks to my local oak ash supplier, they make the cleanest oak ash this side of the Rio Grande, not to mention a damn good chunk of BBQ'd meat. With the help of the good folks down at Serious Texas BBQ I was able to mix up some ash glaze for the firing this weekend.



Also, a problem of growing concern, someone has gotten their little hands on my camera recently and has been taking some pretty cute self-portraits. I'm on to you mister!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

adam,
such a drag... the cracks. not going to pretend i have an answer but it there much grog in the clay body? i see from the pic that its resting on vermiculite? i used to fire big things in school and we would lay them on a flat bed of sand about 1/4 - 1/2 inch thick. good luck

Craig Edwards said...

Gosh those cracks aren't much fun.. so very sorry. Yellow Banks 401 crude is a good base for large coil.. it has nice particle size distribution.. just a thought.. good firings.
~Craig

Adam Field said...

Thank you Jim and Craig for your comments, sympathy and advice. Much appreciated!

~Adam