The Last Beta Firing? Success at iteration 7

Posted on 09/04/2016 by hotnsticky

Janine has just completed the 7th firing and design iteration of the little wood fired kiln. It worked well and there are now no more obvious and glaring changes that need to be made to the design. Of course there are a lot of little issues that will need to be tweaked over the coming months. But I can’t see anything that will require a major rebuild. I think that this design as it stands now is a good one. – Until I think of something better!

The verandah of the pottery now has a collection of these little prototypes all parked there out of the weather. They all work well enough at lower temps, so I will use them for our raku firing weekend workshops. The image shows a very full wheel barrow of wood, enough for two or more firings to stoneware.

The design that I have ended up with is now ready for a limited production run.

This last firing of Janine’s was more or less perfect. Except that we managed to crack a kiln shelf. Janine had a lot of flat ware, so I retrieved a kiln shelf from the rack that hadn’t been fired for over 20 years. I think that the shock of a fast firing and possibly moisture absorbtion that couldn’t escape fast enough was the problem, as this hasn’t happened before. I would usually like to season a new kiln shelf more gentle. Perhaps by rubbing in salt and pepper with a little olive oil might work next time?:) By lunch time we’re famished. Because I managed to catch up with the fresh fish man, we have ultra-fresh sashimi grade tuna. So its sashimi for lunch.

I also make fresh pippies in white wine, chilli and saffron sauce for dinner. What more could you want to celebrate a successful firing day. Followed by a fresh salad from the garden. We have a local grower of saffron now, so we support them.

I have been making a new batch of spy holes for my kiln factory. I throw them on the wheel, very slowly, out of a very coarse mix of crushed high alumina grog and a small amount of kaolin to bind it. The mix is so aggressive that my hands are starting to hurt after just one pot-board full. This mix really takes your skin off. But that’s OK. 20 or so will last me for another year. If I wanted to make any more I’d have to wear gloves. I’ve heard some potters claim that they throw till their fingers bleed, but I’m not that stupid. I know when to stop.

I fire the spy holes in the little wood kiln. This little wonder fires cone 8 on the bottom shelf, cone 9 in the middle and cone 10 at the top. A perfectly useable working stoneware temperature range. Certainly OK for a 3 to 3 1/2 hour firing schedule. My bowls turn out well too. Some nice, soft, pastel glazes.

I’m really pleased that everything has come to a clear resolution at this time. As for the next couple of months. I’m fully booked on other projects and I wont have any time to play with this little kiln for a while. In the evening we de-seed chillies for drying in the kitchen window, along with beans and corn, destined for drying and grinding for polenta. I also finish drying some tomatoes in the oven. Once dried in this way they have the potential to keep almost indefinitely, but they never do. They are so yummy that I eat them like lollies. They never last the year. It’s great to add a handful into winter stocks. They add that certain piquant, sharp sweetness to sauces or a ragu.

This is just another day in the mixed household of self-reliance.

Best wishes from Mr. Beta and Ms Better

Small portable stoneware wood fired kiln. cont.

Posted on 06/04/2016 by hotnsticky

We have just fired the 5th incarnation of our little, portable, stoneware capable, wood fired kiln. It fired very well, again easily in 3 hours. It just cruises along at its own pace. 1 hr to 1000 oC and then 2 hrs to 2 1/2 hrs in reduction to stoneware cone 10 over.

This variation was to test out the new chimney arrangement and that worked perfectly, some much better than the previous one. I am very happy with that. Another problem solved!

The hard-working firing team, going at it flat out. Half way through the wood stack in the barrow. Going for the big final effort, no holes barred! Go for it ladies!

I have it adjusted now so that as the temperature reaches 1000 oC. The kiln automatically goes into reduction. I don’t have to use a damper to make this happen. The kiln continues to rise steadily over the next two hours without having to alter any settings in the firebox. It’s lovely.

However, I notice slight difference in the fired surfaces around the setting, so I conceive of another experiment to try and even out this anomaly. I have everything that I need in stock in the spare parts shelf in the pottery, so no need to go out and buy anything. I spend the morning cutting, grinding and painting all the new bits and the kiln is primed and ready to fire again. I need to glaze some more work for this firing, so there will be a days delay while they dry out. This will be variation/refinement firing number 6.

I’ve learnt from bitter experience that if I fire fast with freshly applied glazes. I can blow them off the pot on the underneath side. All my bodies and glazes are currently made here onsite from locally collected and processed rocks, shales and ashes. Everything is made onsite and it takes a month of Sundays to get it all organised, dried, crushed and milled and then bagged ready for inclusion in the glazes. These are weighed out and then sometimes re-milled. and at other times, just passed through a very fine sieve to extract any small detritus that was caught in a gap around the lid of the ball mill and didn’t get fully ground. Glazes with no clay in them are notoriously delicate and friable to handle once dry and very prone to just falling off from the underneath side of pots. Of course i use a little bentonite to help stabilise them and shrink them on as well as creating a little bit of dry strength, but I have found that I can only add 1 or 2 % before it starts to change some of the glazes.

Tragically, as always seems to happen. I found yet one more issue with this configuration that needs a little more thought. During this last firing, I notice that I could improve the kiln shelf and stainless steel grating arrangement. So it’s back to the drawing board, or in this case, the work bench and I make a new set of one-piece ceramic supports that I hope will work a lot better. I pull the kiln to pieces and start again from scratch, right back to floor level and create a new setting design.

Maybe this will be the last of the beta firings?

We will fire again today with a load of Janine’s work in it this time. As she has a load glazed and dried ready to go.

Always so much more to learn.

Another Post From The Running Postman

Posted on 26/02/2016 by hotnsticky

The wild flowers have been lovely, but they are all gone now. It’s almost autumn and the cherry trees in the Chekov orchard are loosing their leaves. They are the first to fruit and the first to go dormant. We are experiencing a late summer scorching week of high temperatures in the mid 30’s and have had to be out early and late to water the garden. Overall, this summer has been exceptional, although it has been hot, it has also rained a lot and even at this late stage , with all this heat now, we still have green grass outside our window. We are usually looking out at dry, dusty gravel at this stage of the summer.

I have delivered the latest kiln to my customer and all went so very smoothly. Just as it should, as we do a planning to get it all just right, but regular readers of this blog will know that the best laid plans can suddenly go terribly wrong at the drop of a hat when a third party lets you down after promising faithfully to turn up on time. This is never the case with Dave, my local crane truck driver. He is amazingly punctual and careful with my jobs. It’s a pleasure to work with someone so professional and creatively competent at moving heavy objects.

Warren and I have already started the next job and got it well under way. As I am ahead of schedule with my orders, I have been able to spend time in the pottery making some more of my porcelain. Iron stained yellow, pale ochre grey and creamy grey/white bodies.

We have also now completed 5 firings in our little new experimental, portable wood fired kiln. It gets better every time we fire it. That is to say we are getting better at understanding it and how it works. I’m also finding out all it’s weak points. All the things that I didn’t expect or imagine might happen have shown them selves and come to pass, so each time we fire, we find a new problem that needs a better solution. I solve each one as it appears and then onto the next. I think that I have it all solved, then something else appears. I’m constantly thinking this next firing will see it all solved and then I can start to produce them. Always the optimist:)

Cast iron doesn’t work in this kiln. OK for raku, but not here.

We have tried experiments with different types of fire bars over time and worked out that in this kiln, we can’t use ceramic fire-bars, or mild steel fire-bars, or cast iron bars, but custom welded stainless steel fire bars are the go for this little beauty when fired in reduction. The other fire bars that we have tried have worked well in other kilns at different times, but for this one, it’s going to have to be custom made stainless steel. They have proved to also have their issues, but I have worked thorough these and I now have a workable solution. I just need to try one more variation on the way we use the flue!

I am so confident about this little kiln now, that I am starting to draw up a plan for a larger version. Increasing the kiln shelf area from 300mm. x 455mm. (12’ x 18”) to a kiln shelf of 455mm x 455mm. Sq. (18” x 18”)!

For the last few weeks, the hazelnuts have started to ripen and fall, we dry them in the sun in the kitchen window sill for a week and then they are ready to eat. Unlike our almonds, that always seem to need oven drying and slightly roasting to get the best out of them. The filberts are good to go, straight out of their shell after drying. This is our first good crop from them. We planted 2 year old grafted seedlings about 3 and 4 years ago, so the oldest ones are just starting to come to fruiting now. The first year, all the shells were empty. Last year we only got a few hands-full of nuts and half were hollow, but this year, they seem to have reached maturity, with most casings containing a nut — and they are lovely, crunchy and sweet. We have a few with a piece of nice cheese after dinner.

I’ve been in and out of the pottery pushing ahead with making pots for the next firing. We are technically still in fire ban season, so we can’t fire the big kiln easily at this time, as it takes 20 hours and is obvious to passers-by. But the little portable kiln is OK for a quick 3 1/2 hr. firing on the cooler days after some rain or a damp night of heavy dew. We can start early and finish before the day gets hot at mid day and after. It’s very convenient. We have settled into using just one wheel barrow of paddock falls, dry dead branches. I’ll have to try it with fresh split pine, old pallets and eucalypt heartwood in the future, but I can’t see any real problems there. Time will tell.

As the garden is thriving we have been eating fresh stuffed zucchini flowers. These are our 2nd planting of zucchinis. We are starting on our third planing of cucumbers, as the extremely hot days really frazzles them, and our 5th planting of raddishes etc. We are also enjoying capsicums stuffed with ricotta and our own dried tomatoes and herbs. We have started to dig the first 3 rows of the 2nd planting of potatoes. It looks to be a very prolific crop. We fill a box quickly. There are twenty rows to keep us well fed through the winter.

Regrettably, Janine and I went to the fish markets mid-week for a late sushi lunch on our way to an opening of a friends show at Watters Gallery later in the evening. I say regrettably, because I was struck down with food poisoning during the evening and had to leave early from the show, before my friend even turned up.

I’ve had to have 2 days off with the runs, and stomach cramps, unable to sleep through the first night without interruption. I am chastened and weakened, but starting to recover. An unwelcome surprise. I won’t be eating anything more from the sushi shop at the fish markets! Even now I’m still suffering a delicate stomach and slight head ache that makes it hard to concentrate. I have a load of work to do, but I’m not really up to achieving much just yet.

Best wishes from The Running Postman

Stealing Time – Guilty Creative Pleasures

Posted on 11/02/2016 by hotnsticky

I quickly steal a bit of time in the workshop. I want to make some pots out of my aged porcelain stone bodies. I’m supposed to be building gas burners and silver soldering copper gas manifolds, but the lure of the potters wheel is just too strong. I manage to get 30 or so pots made from 3 of my specially prepared and aged porcelain stone clay/stone pastes. It’s a good feeling to be back on the wheel again after a week of brick laying and kiln building. I can only take just so many days of wearing the dust mask, goggles, ear muffs, gloves and all the other OH&S paraphernalia. It’s socially isolating and almost disorienting in its exclusion of the tangible world.

A day back in the pottery grounds me and alows me the fuzzy pleasure of thinking creatively again.

Some of these ground stone pastes of mine are so short that even after 25 years of ageing. I still can’t kneed them by the usual spiral kneading technique. One is just so short that it cracks apart under the rolling stress. I return to the tried and true ‘cut and slap’ wedging method. This has be proven to me to work much better than spiral kneading where finely ground porcelain stone bodies are concerned. The cut and slap method compresses and activates all the clay particles that can respond to this kind of wedging. The rest of the fine, non-plastic stone particles are firmly encased in the weak plastic matrix. It develops a tight workable putty that is almost throwable on the wheel, as long as I take a lot of time to coax it along slowly into the final shape, without expecting anything to happen quickly. The essentially non-plastic, porous, surface sucks up water and dries out very fast, making the whole soft and floppy, so I have developed a technique of re-using all the wet slip from my fingers to lubricate the paste, thick slip doesn’t absorb so quickly, so that it doesn’t become too floppy, and extends the working time. Still, I have to work fast to get the form into a suitable shape and lift it off the wheel before it collapses.

It’s clumsy and slow, but it eventually delivers a workable open bowl form. Very heavy at the base and only just thrown thinly enough at the rim to pass muster. I rely on doing a lot of turning to get the shape to emerge eventually from the clod of stone paste.

Turning can only be done on bodies like this when they are almost dry. Any time before this, the soft, loosely bonded coagulate of mineral granules, just tears itself apart into crumbly chunks, making the whole pot unusable. Australian readers will recognise this particular torn and crumbly texture if I mention the name of Mersey Valley cheddar cheese. It’s impossible to cut this cheese without it tearing and crumbling against the knife. My milled stone paste porcelain bodies act like this if I try to turn them leather hard. I wait until there are significant white drying rings all over the surface before attempting to start turning.

The stoney grit in the matrix takes the edge off the turning tools in minutes. I have to stop and file the edge on my hardened steel turning tools very regularly. This involves getting off the potters wheel and walking some distance away, where it is safe to create iron filings by filing the edge sharp again, that wont end up in the clay.

Since my last trip to Japan to study single stone porcelain making, I returned with a cluster of tungsten tipped turning tools specially made for turning porcelain. These tools stay sharpe for a very long time. But even they eventually go blunt under constant use. I have found that I can recover the cutting edge back to its pristine sharpness by using a diamond dust impregnated file. This is the closest that I get to bling! I do apparently own quite a few diamonds. It’s just that they are invisibly small and encased in some sort of amalgam. Not sexy, almost as expensive but very useful!

I treat us to a dinner of gyoza, Japanese style pork and vegetable dumplings. I use lots of our garlic along with prime minced pork with very little fat. I get our local butcher to mince up some prime lean pork for me specially. I add in sweet corn niblets, finely shredded cabbage and green onion shoots. I fry it all up to make sure that it is all well cooked through and then work it into the tiny wanton wafers that I buy from the Asian supermarket section. These are pan fried in sesame oil, then when well crisped on one side, turned over and a cup of stock added to the pan with the lid on to steam them for a couple of minutes more.

They are beautifully rewarding, both crisp and yet soft and juicy at the same time. Wonderfull!

A real treat.

Best wishes
from the stone aged (aged stone) man and his wanton Wilma

New Small Wood Fired Kiln

Posted on 07/02/2016 by hotnsticky

The first of the figs are ripe and we savour it. It is just perfect, sweet and juicy. We wouldn’t have got it or any others if The Lovely Hardworking One, hadn’t been out there early and netted the branch a few weeks ago. If we don’t net the fruit trees or the most laden branches, the birds take everything.

There weren’t any fruit eating birds here in this bushy area when we arrived, but 40 years on and an enormous amount of work later, we have built 4 dams for a secure key-line water supply and open grassy areas between the orchards, with areas of understory native shrubbery. We left all the really big established trees and without knowing it, we created a perfect habitat for all sorts of native bird life, from the very small finches, through to bowerbirds and magpies. There is even a very large white owl, that we haven’t managed to see close-up, so we can’t identify it. It has taken frogs off the kitchen window at night, right in front of our eyes, but moves so quickly and so totally silently that it strikes and removes its prey, without actually touching the glass and is them gone is a flash of pale wings, before we can adjust our eyes to the scene. I’m constantly amazed at how clever our birds are at fossicking out a living from our little property. So the fruit trees have to be enclosed to protect some of the fruit for us. The vegetable garden is now totally enclosed in small (35mm.) hex gal wire and very fine nylon mesh. This keeps out most of the birds that we don’t want in there. Those are the fruit and veg eaters, but allows the little finches in to feed on bugs. It seems to work OK for us now, but has taken a lot of trial and error to work it all out – mostly error.

I have spent a little time over the summer break building another version of my portable stoneware wood fired kiln. These kilns are a direct response to seeing and working with Stefan Jakob’s ‘Ikea’ garbage bin raku kilns. Such a fun idea! And they work really well too, but only at the lower temperatures used for raku. It made me think about if it would be possible to make a reliable stoneware version of this kiln. Not in an Ikea bin, but in a custom made stainless steel monocoque box frame. The answer that I have been developing over the last half dozen years in my spare time is Yes!

This one solves all the problems identified in the last version, that although it could get to stoneware, some of its components weren’t likely to have a long life. I abandoned the ceramic fibre lining, as it doesn’t last for extended periods of time at very high temperatures where there is a lot of wood ash. The fibre turns glassy and peels off, like glaze shelling off, exposing new fibre, which then dissolves, the ash glaze slowly eats its way through the lining in this way.

We first experimented with a ceramic fibre lined stoneware wood fired kiln back in the late 70’s and early 80’s (see Handbook for Australian Potters P289-291.) In that kiln I used the new material at that time called ‘saffil’ board, that was mostly composed of alumina fibre. A 10 mm. hot face lining of this material lasted 30 stoneware firings before it was eaten away in the hottest part. These new little kilns use light weight refractory insulating bricks as the lining.

I couldn’t allow myself to recommend or to sell anything that wasn’t up to scratch and capable of delivering a long working life, so the development has continued, designing out the apparent flaws as they made them selves known. So now the design is a little closer to completion. I have designed version 5, so I hope that after that is built and fired a few times, everything will be settled down and we will have a very long lived and reliable small portable kiln. I think that we could say that we are now moving from prototype to beta testing stage. Perhap there will be something that we can sell to other potters with like minds. Just like we do with the more substantial gas and electric kilns that we build here – only much cheaper.

The improvements in version 4 meant that we could fire it up to 1,000oC in one hour. This part of the firing could easily go very much faster, but we have cracked kiln shelves in the past by going too fast below red heat. We then took the firing from 1000 to 1280 in another hour, finally soaking at 1280oC to 1300oC for the last hour until cone 10 was over. We got very good reduction colour in the glazes in that time frame. I was amazed what a couple of extra hours could achieve, in terms of quality. After all it’s not all about intense speed. We can already do that. This is more about getting very good quality results with a minimum of expenditure of effort and fuel.

I spent a few days working out how to create this little wonder of a kiln, to enlarge it to use a 12” x 18” (300mm. x 460mm.) kiln shelf in the setting, and still be able to cut the frame out of one sheet of Stainless steel with no or minimal wastage.

I’m sure that there are a number of potters who are with me and like minded in this regard, potters who are thinking just the same as me. How can I achieve lovely wood fired results without firing for days and creating loads of smokey pollution. I think that this sort of little fun kiln will be very good for potters with an interest in wood firing, but without the large work flow required to fill a larger anagama kiln, or a suitabe place where so much smoke can be created day after day. This little kiln is definately not smoke free, but the smoke is minimal.

As it turned out, this was a very relaxed and easy firing using dead brushwood and small, dead, fallen branches as fuel. There are always loads of eucalypt paddock falls all around our property from season to season. We collected 3 wheel barrow loads, one of kindling twigs and another two barrow loads of small thin branches, up to 50 mm in dia. We ended up using only 2 of them. We will fire it again for a little longer next time, slowing it down a little so that we can not only get the good reduction colour in the glazes but also some surface flashing in the bodies as well. I’m intrigued, what is the minimum length of firing time required to be able to get some pleasing wood fired effects on the surface of our pots?

When we fired up my pots in the first kiln, up to stoneware in just 1 hr. in reduction in the earliest version of this kiln, there was little reduction effect showing in the glazes. The pots looked pasty and palid, as if oxydised, but were in fact very pale grey, so they were reduced. It seemed that 30 minutes of reduction wasn’t enough to get a good response from the clay and glaze chemistry. This time, at 3 hrs. The results have shown very good reduced glaze colour effects, but only a very limited flashing colour on the exposed clay bodies. The work is starting to show some pink flash on the porcelain clay bodies with this slightly longer firing time, so we are getting close now. At least there is something there. The difference between one hour and 3 hours is dramatic. Perhaps the next firing of 4 or 5 hrs to S/W will do the trick and give results that I am better pleased with?

I want every thing now! I just don’t have the time to be able to do it all.

best wishes

from the multi-tasking S&J

8 New Clay Tests

Posted on 01/02/2016 by hotnsticky

I have been using the warm weather. In-between rain storms. To dry out some of my new batches of single-stone porcelain clay test batches. The 50 litre batch of 12 month aged porcelain slip is now almost stiff enough. It should have been ready to lift off the drying bed a couple of days ago, but with this last series of rain storms, the atmosphere has been very humid lately, so we have slow drying weather. The mornings start with a heavy mist that doesn’t burn off until later in the morning when the sun get up.

I have used the plaster tubs to dry out some small batches and I now have 7 different new clays to test and throw. They are all just about the same on the wheel, not a great deal of difference. I have dug out a bag of special ‘vintage’ porcelain from my clay store. I don’t have a date on the bag, but reference to my clay-making diary tells me that it was made in 199o! This is the oldest clay in my cellar at 26 years of age. It has stiffened a bit too much to be throwable now, so I have to dampen it down a little. I’m amazed how well it throws. The reason that I put it away in the first place was because it was so short that it was unusable. Now after 25 years of ageing, it throws like a normal porcelain. It does have a slightly peculiar ‘grainy’ texture though. A little bit odd for such a finely milled clay. Some sort of bio-chemical change has taken place in the intervening years of ageing.

I remember co-responding with Harry Davis back in the 80’s. He asked me if I had any experience with clays that went grainy after long periods of ageing. He had left clay in his clay store while he went away for 10 years and worked up in Izcuchaka in the Peruvian Andes on his and May’s private aid project. When he returned, all his clay had changed texture and become grainy. I hadn’t experienced anything like it at that time. I wasn’t old enough to have clay laid down for ten years at that time! Now I am, and I suspect that it is some sort of aggregation of the microscopic clay particles into larger flocs over extremely long periods of time. This happens in slip if left in a slightly acid condition. So, perhaps it’s possible in the plastic state as well?

Of these 7 different bodies, there are 7 different colours, from iron stained yellow, through to almost white. Of the bodies that I have made from my ‘bai tunze’ single-stone porcelain stone. There are variations in colour due to the fact that there are veins of iron running through the rock. I crush the stones through the large, primary jaw crusher and then spend some time sorting and separating the iron-stained pieces from the white material, these are them processed separately to give yellow, cream and grey clay body mixes.

The iron stained bodies respond well to the wood firing by flashing to a mahogany red colour, where the paler coloured mixes flash in the wood kiln to a pale pink to crimson colour. All the milled stone body mixes grow a series of organic algae and/or fungus come moulds of some sort or another. The clear plastic bags that I store them in turn green and/or buff/brown where daylight can get to them. A little bit off-putting, but it seems to increase workability/plasticity rather than decrease it over longer periods of time. I’m not saying that the presence of algal growth increases plasticity, but the time spent ageing the clay increases the plasticity and the algal growth is a natural sign of this extended time taken.

Because I don’t add anything to my milled local porcelain stone bodies, except a small amount of bentonite and the slightly acidic tanninised tank water. The whole thing is alive with all sorts of organic material from both the natural stone and the water. It’s a living thing! It doesn’t happen straight away, but over time stuff grows in there where-ever the conditions are right.

Commercial clay doesn’t do this. I recently opened a bag of commercially prepared paper clay to find that it smelled of ‘dettol’ antiseptic fluid. Nothing is going to grow in that! I’m an organic gardener and I am trying to live a simple, creative, organic life. If green algal mould is the result in the bags of clay, so be it. At least I know that it is alive, and not dead and even possibly toxic.

One of the batches of my ball milled baitunze, batch JV15db, was milled for a little longer than usual to get it extra fine. However, I seem to have milled it a bit too long this time, 16 hrs. I suspect that this was too long, because when I threw my first bowl out of it, it shrank and cracked in the base where it was thickest. This has happened once before. I will have to blend it with a coarse milled batch now to reduce the shrinkage a little.

For dinner we try yet another variation of ratatouille with todays pick of French beans, we par-boil them, so that they are still crisp and then add them into the mix of ingredients from the garden. I partially BarBQ the egg plants and zucchinis while grilling some long yellow capsicums. Janine reduces a boiler full of very ripe tomatoes, onion, garlic, olive oil and basil. We finish it off in the flat flan-pan, then pop it under the grill and melt some grated cheese topping to a golden yellow/brown crispy finish.

This is what we have, so this is what we eat.

Best wishes from the algal greenie and his all greenie gal
Steve

Spring and The Man for All Seasons

Posted on 06/11/2015 by hotnsticky

The broad beans that I planted before leaving for Japan have come to fruiting. They have been slow arriving, but now they are in full fruit. We have had 3 picks from them so far and there will be more, but with the increase in heat and day length, there are no more flowers, so as we pick the last beans from each plant we pull it out and add it to the compost pile.

There haven’t been quite enough of them to get tired of them yet, we have managed them quite well. I don’t think that there will be many left at the end of the season to dry for later use. only just enough to save for next years seed.

The garlic that I planted in March is wilting now and drying off, so it is time to harvest it and lay it out for drying. This will have to wait for next week, as we are flat-out busy cleaning up the pottery and setting out our pots for the Open Studio Weekends coming up. We are pretty much ready now with only minor adjustments left to do today. I did all the lighting and most of the pricing yesterday.

Next to the garlic I planted a long row of peas which The Lovely enjoyed while I was away in Japan. They are all over now, so I planted potatoes in that spot a few weeks ago. They are all starting to show their first leaves now. They went in a month late, but I was so busy when I got back that I just couldn’t do everything at once. Pot making, kiln building, wood splitting, kiln firings, studio cleaning, weeding, mowing, planting and harvesting.

I have been back a while now and just about caught up. The garden is pretty much fully planted out with the summer vegetables and we have already picked our first cucumber, zucchinis, picked our first sprigs of basil and had a couple of meals of artichokes. Janine lifted some of the earliest garlic that had self-sown on the edge of the path, a few knobs that we missed last year, that had grown into splendid plants. They are all dried, plaited and hung up next to the stove in the kitchen. It’s so nice to have fresh garlic again. I forget just how juicy and oily it is when it is this fresh. This is the first year that we have had our own garlic last the full year. We had just 2 little dried out knobs left in the colander on the kitchen bench when Janine picked that first plant.

I have managed to make progress on the big new gas kiln for Sturt Workshops. It is all panelled and bricked up now. I had my very good friend and right hand man Warren down for a few days to give me a hand, as there is just too much to do at this time of year and I’m only one man.

Warren is an amazingly creative person. So skilful at so many things. He was apprentice of the year in his trade course. For two years in a row! Then he worked as a stonemason in Canada for a while, then as a fencer on his return, a panel beater, and a potter/sculptor, this was when I first met him. He worked in the sculpture department of the National Arts School for some years and then studied horticulture and set up his own business. An amazingly creative, restless spirit.

I taught Warren in the ceramics course at The National Arts School, back in the 90’s. On the first day of the year, I started my class by getting the students to make some good, basic, pottery tools. I took them all over to the sculpture workshop, where there were woodworking and metal working tools and vices. They were encouraged to get to know how to use these simple tools, so that they could make and sharpen their own tools. A little bit of self-reliance, that I had decided to inject into the course syllabus.

I handed out some small pieces of thin stainless steel sheet and a pair of tin snips to each of the students, so that they could cut out a small kidney-shaped profile tool. By the time I had turned around, Warren had cut out a perfect kidney shape. He held it up to me and said,

“Do you mean like this”?

I said “Yes! Exactly like that. Do you want a job”!

He replied, “Maybe, it depends what it is”

We have worked together on a casual basis ever since. When I have too much work on, it’s great to get Warren down here to give me hand. Apart from being amazingly skilful, he is great fun and we laugh a lot. Working with Warren puts a spring in my step.

Having been a panel beater, Warren is excellent with sheet metal and with the State Medal in MIG welding under his belt, he is a very useful man to have in a kiln factory. He has a great eye for detail and is very careful and accurate with his hand-work skills. This in conjunction with a few years as a mason, makes him ideal at the very fine and precise type of brick laying that I do in my kilns. It’s great to have The Man for All Seasons here in the Spring.

Two Wood Firings in One Week

Posted on 23/10/2015 by hotnsticky

Two Wood Kiln Firings in One Week

I have decided that I can fit in one extra firing before the Southern Highlands Arts Festival – Arts Trail, Open Studios weekends on the 7th & 8th of November, then again on the 14th & 15th.

The kiln is unpacked and repacked while it is still warm.

For some unexplainable reason, I wake up just after 3 am in the morning. Or is it still very late at night? I’m not too sure, but I’m wide awake, so I get up and walk down to the pottery workshop in the dark. It is quite overcast tonight/this morning, as there are no stars to be seen up in the blackness where the sky ought to be.

It’s so pitch black and very quiet, it seems a shame to make any noise at all. I decide to only put one light on and work in the soft ambiance and stillness. I make the kindling fire from the scraps of wood that fractured off from the bigger logs as I was splitting them yesterday. I spent most of the day yesterday in cutting, splitting and then, with Janine’s help, stacking it. We stacked half of it onto the truck. A very full load without sides on the tray. I drove it down to the kiln shed, covered it with a tarp against the possibility of rain overnight.

I cut all the straight log wood into hob lengths, avoiding the branched bits. These, I cut around and leave aside for splitting into small short pieces for use at the beginning of the firing, when I start the fire on-the-floor of the firebox. This first stage of the firing gently heats the pots up from cold, but also serves to build up a pile of embers in the base of the firebox which is necessary to ignite the big logs later on in the firing process.

Every part of the tree is used. I don’t like to use branched bits for the longer hob wood, as it doesn’t split easily or well, often coming apart into horrid, sprawling, jagged pieces that are difficult shapes to stack and stoke, so I have developed a technique of spacing my chain saw cuts to get the maximum number of full length ‘hob’ wood pieces from the straight grained sections of the log and a smaller number of knotty, branched bits left in-between for use as floor wood lumps. I usually walk along the log with my metal measuring stick and mark off all the cuts with a red wax crayon. This takes a little time, but makes the cutting and sizing much faster and more accurate overall.

The kindling fire starts well and develops slowly into a full firebox of burning chunks, after 3 hours, there is enough ember built up in the lower part of the fire box, (‘the ash-pit’) on the floor, to support the fire starting off on the hobs, in the upper part of the firebox (‘on the hobs’). The long, thick pieces of wood introduced onto the ‘hobs’ from the top of the firebox, are held suspended by the brick ‘hobs’ just above the burning embers in the ash pit, placed here, they soon catch alight and start to burn fiercely. This takes the firing to another level, where the wood burns cleanly and thoroughly, allowing the temperature to rise evenly and steadily, up until it is time to begin reduction at about 1000oC.

After cutting and stacking the kiln wood yesterday, I spent the rest of the afternoon in grinding, fettling, filing, acid-etching, washing and baking the newly galvanised kiln frame for Sturt Workshops prior to etch-priming. This is all mindless dull work that I have done a hundred times before, if not more and a good time to allow my mind to settle and watch itself wander, constantly returning to the hand/arm action of simple brushing. Paint on, Paint off. I don’t need to be in a buddhist temple in Kyoto to practice mindfulness. Any place will do, but it helps to be able to make the time for it and it alone.

Although it is very early in the morning, I’m keeping myself occupied in fiddling with the very small fire in the fire box. I need to watch it carefully, as at this stage it can easily go out if it is left for any

period of time unattended. As I sit and carefully place each new small piece of wood on the pyre, I suddenly realise that it is starting to rain. No wonder that there were no stars in the sky. This is no problem for me, as I took the precaution to cover the wood outside on the truck last night. I’m using freshly split pine, which although being felled two years ago, is still damp inside when split from the log. I don’t want it to get any wetter until the firing is up to 1000oc. or more, then it won’t matter if the wood is wet and may even be of some use in creating the ‘reduction’ atmosphere in the kiln, which changes the colour of the clay bodies and glazes. Such is the odd nature of burning wood in a potter’s kiln. Pottery may seem superficially to be a simple craft activity, but there is a whole world of science, chemistry and associated technologies that need to be learnt, assimilated and internalised, so that you can then work intuitively and creatively in the medium.

In this firing I have 3 large jars and then a lot of bottles, with a few shelves of smaller domestic pots underneath. This firing isn’t very efficiently packed, but there is no easy way to get these big round jars into a more-or-less square box of a kiln chamber. That is just the way it is, so I do the best that I can with what I have to work with.

I have done this so many times, that I have judged the amount of wood needed, down to the the last half wheel barrow load. The firing proceeds smoothly and evenly right up to top temperature of 1300oC or cone 10 flat, in 16 hours. Because I started so early this morning, there is time for a hot shower and a relaxed dinner back up in the house, even a bottle of wine to celebrate. This is civilised kiln firing. Perhaps even Laid back ?

We bake a whole snapper for dinner with some freshly picked broad beans from the garden. The are perfect just now. Sweet and juicy without any starchiness at all, just the way that I love them. This is the 2nd pick and there will probably another couple before they get too big. The first few beans are eaten raw as an entre, perfect with a glass of chilled white wine. We bake a few potatoes, sweet potato, red onions and some pumpkin. Our garden feeds us very well!

I bake the fish with some mushrooms and slices of lemon and serve it dressed with a sauce of melted butter with finely chopped anchovies, capers and green olives.

It’s a tough life, but some one has to have a go at it.

Tomorrow I will start to grind, sort and clean all the pots from the last firing, spend a bit more time in the garden and add another coat of paint to the kiln frame waiting in the factory.

Never a dull moment!

fond regards from the multi-tasking Steve and Janine

Hitting the Ground Running

Posted on 16/10/2015 by hotnsticky

I’m just back from Japan, It’s been a great trip. I’ve been away since late August. I’m back just in time to discover that my friend and mentor, Allan Parkes has just died. Such an interesting and creative person.

For the first time, I decided to rent some studio space in Japan and make some work there. It was very good. I hope that I’ve learned something while I’ve been away, but one never knows. Only time will tell. I tend to take things in and let them blend and simmer for a while, then hope that something will percolate back out again in some dilute form that will enhance and extend what I already do with what I know. If nothing useful emerges, then there is nothing lost, as I really enjoyed my time there. As I alway do. I have a strong affinity for Japan, the people, the food, the creative endeavours of all those people that I have met and/or whose work I have seen in the Galleries.

I had one day to unpack and do my washing, then straight in to the pottery and kiln factory. I have a large kiln ordered, so it’s straight into welding mode. I have to earn some money. I weld up the steel frame and get it off to the galvanisers in just 4 days. While the kiln is away. I get stuck into glazing all the bisque fired pots that I left here in the pottery, before I went to Japan. So it’s glazing, decorating and kiln packing. Then wood stacking, kiln shelf grinding, cleaning and washing. Finally the kiln is packed and ready to fire.

It’s 5 o’clock in the morning and the early bird chorus is just starting. I’m down in the kiln shed firing the kiln, I like to get an early start for my firings. For some very intimate psychological/physiological reason that I don’t really understand, I seem to like to get an early start, when it’s dark and quiet and I have the whole world to myself. Well, almost. There is of course the odd rooster in the distance and the bird song. The birds seem to start calling to each other even before I’m aware that that there is any change in the light levels, but they are so much more sensitive to the natural world than I am. We have all learnt to live in an un-natural modified environment with electric lights, refrigeration, supermarkets, air con, and flat screens. I eschew most of this for the frugal comfort of home grown vegetables and a wood fire for warmth and cooking. Of course I do have electric lights and a fridge. I’m not a ludite, but I’m trying to keep my life as simple as I can, while still engaging with the modern world.

Half an hour later, I can start to see a slight lightening of the sky and instead of it being jet black, it starts to have a very pale light grey to bluish tinge to it. I’m sure that if I had to live without any modern ‘conveniences’, that I’d soon adapt to my circumstances and start to see the dawns approach, just like the birds. But at this stage I’m happy in my hybrid world, sitting on the edge of my small hamlet, with access to everything that a modern first world economy has to offer only half an hour away and I’m also happy to live here quietly and ignore most of it.

Electricity is great. We make all of our own. In fact we make about 3 times more than we use, and sell the excess 2/3rds into the grid for money. Having fresh drinking water on tap is also a great thing. We catch all our own rain water from our roof and store it for later use. Hot water on tap has to be the greatest luxury ever invented. I consider it the basic standard of civilisation. If you have hot water, you probably have peace and stability. We make our own hot water from a combination of solar panels and a boiler fitted into the back of our wood fired kitchen stove. We also own a fridge, a small one, but we don’t own a freezer, even though we have a large kitchen garden and could find a use for one. We thought about it and decided against it, as it uses too much electricity. We always have something fresh to pick and eat from the garden. We eat what is in season in the garden, what we have over, we vacuum preserve it in ‘Vacola’ jars and store it away in the pantry.

I’m perfectly aware that the way we live is both very hard work and a great luxury. We are in control of most aspects of our life and that is our greatest luxury. However, Just like everyone else living in a capitalist economy, we have to earn money to pay the bills that constantly accrue. Such things as Council rates, insurance, registration, taxes etc. There are lots of once-off bills that occur throughout the year, but add up to be our major expenses over-all. As we don’t have conventional jobs, cash flow can sometimes be a problem, but we manage by living quite frugally. Luckily, most of the things in life that we aspire to can’t be bought for cash, but are earned through hard graft and personal effort.

This wood firing will be the last that we can fit in before the Southern Highlands Arts Festival Open Studio Weekends, that are slated for the first two weekends in November. It gives us a couple of weeks to unpack the kiln and then fettle and grind all the pots. With any luck, we should have just enough time to unpack the kiln, then clean up the studio ready for the opening.

Best wishes from Steve who is glad to be back home again and hitting the ground running

A Day in Karatsu and the Old Ochawangama

Posted on 22/09/2015 by hotnsticky

I make the trip to Karatsu. It’s actually not that far from Arita, via Imari. The first time that I came here, Janine and I made the trip on the train. Two trains actually, changing lines and companies at Imari. I’ve written about Karatsu previously, so I don’t want to repeat my self here, so will just stick to new places and observations.

I want to re-visit the workshop and kiln of Nakazato Taroemon the 14th. But who’s counting? This family have been important potters in this town since 1516! I wonder if the 14th generation Nakazato Taroemon has a first-born son? No pressure! Just wondering?

Interestingly, I’m told that Ri Sampei, came here to Karatsu first, before travelling on to Arita, where he discovered the now famous porcelain stone deposit at Izumiyama. Then again, I’ve also read that he didn’t really exist at all and is a convenient character to hang a whole lot of speculative psudo-history. Or, it may have been a whole raft of Korean potters who came and established the high fired pottery industry in this area in the late 1500’s?

We make our way to the Nakazato Family compound. There is a lovely old family Gallery here in one of the back streets. Personally I don’t care for much of the work on display here. It just doesn’t speak to me at all. What I am keen on seeing is the old family climbing chamber kiln. The ‘Ochawangama’. It is located up one of the nearby alleys and is one of the most beautiful old kiln ruins that I have seen. There is one in Shigaraki that almost rivals it, but this one has the wabi/sabi edge I feel.

It’s a beautiful thing.

We peek into the private workshop window to see if there is anyone in there and sure enough, Taroemon the 14th is at work on Saturday the 19th. And the 14th is turning his 7th tea bowl of the morning.

Later, we visit Mike Martino, on the outskirts of Karatsu He is a really lovely guy, very welcoming and so open to questions and very giving of information. He makes time for us, even though he is quite busy. We have tea from his wood fired cups and made in one of his traditional lidded bowl tea pots. The centre of his studio is dominated by a rather large old stone grain grinding wheel. It makes a rather nice, if somewhat unusual table. It manifests the character of both shibui and wabi. Mike uses both electric and gas kilns as well as a large wood fired kiln outside the pottery. He has a courtyard path, not unlike our own driveway, composed almost entirely of shards.

We all find that we have to dispose of work that isn’t quite successful. Pots that aren’t either firsts or seconds, but something quite other. Work that we don’t want anyone else to see. Yes! That bad. Failures can become something quite beautiful collectively as shards. It has worked for us in our driveway.

It comes out in general conversation, that both Mike and Tatsuya lift weights for a hobby. It shows!

Best wishes from the so unfit Steve In Karatsu

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