All Fired Up

In my last post I wrote about receiving a new kiln for my birthday.  I've had a chance to put it through its paces since then.  Before using the kiln to fire any actual ceramic work you are supposed to fire it empty one time and check to see if the heat work, (heat over time) is accurate or needs adjusting.

You do this use by using cones - no, not the kind that you want on a hot day.  The cones you see in the picture below measure if your kiln is heating properly.  There are different cones for different heat levels.

I wanted to do a cone 5 firing (2205F), so I placed a cone 4, cone 5 and cone 6 in my kiln.  After a cone 5 firing, the heat should cause the cone 4 to bend completely over, the cone 5 (my target) should bend quite a bit and form a sort of hook and the cone 6 should be straight or only very slightly bent.

I was online chatting with AJE team member, Karen Totten,  during my test firing.  We could both hardly wait to see the outcome.  I opened my kiln and Wha????  None of them were bent at all.  Panic!  We tried to figure out what had gone wrong.  Turns out that in my excitement I had set the temperature wrong.  Without going into a long explanation, there is a huge temperature difference between cone 05 and cone 5.  I'd set it at cone 05.  I knew better, but goofed up anyway.  Well better to have an operator error than a flaw in the kiln!  Here are the cone results, from the second firing.

Here's what the cone 5 looked like.  It needed to bend just a tad more, which means my kiln is running just a bit on the cool side. So I am now holding the temperature an additional 5 minutes to account for that.

 Ceramics are usually fired twice.  The first firing is at a lower temperature and the ceramic is called bisqueware after that firing.  The second firing is at a higher temperature and it bonds the glaze to the clay and makes the clay hard and strong.  The actual temperatures vary by the types of clay you are using and the effects you are aiming for.

I did a firing this week with 2 different clay bodies.  There were some earthenware beads that can be glazed at cone 05 and some stoneware that is bisque fired at 05. 

The red clay is stoneware that is ready to be bisque fired. Unfortunately I accidentally broke the large snowflake wall hanging when I lifted it off this tray to place it in the kiln.  The glazed pendants are also stoneware.  I had glazed fired them last week, but hadn't put the glaze on thickly enough and they needed touching up.  Because they had been glaze fired already, I had to fire them at a lower heat for the touch ups (with Mayco Coat & Stroke glaze).  The glazed earthenware beads can be glaze fired at cone 05, too.

 My kiln is built in layers, so it is easy to load.  I took off the top layers (see above) and put some of the pieces on the bottom shelf.    These pieces do not have glaze on their backs, if they did, the glaze would fuse to the shelf, ruining both the shelf and the pendants.

The earthenware beads have glaze on all sides, so they are suspended on a bead rack.  Notice how they are spaced.  If they touch one another, they will fuse together.  Once everything was in place, I replaced the top two layers of the kiln and started the heat.

The results?  The rounded triangle pieces didn't turn out very well.  They are fine structurally, but boring looking.  They will get banished to this tin.

 The red clay snowflakes look promising. I've used white Mason Stains on some of them.  I still need to wipe back a bit more of the white from the raised areas, but you can get an idea of what they will look like when they are glaze fired.

And here are the glazed beads.  Some of the beads, especially the brown ones, still need more coats of glaze.  Obviously its a matter of learning as I go.  I made a few simple beads in Christmas colors, but I especially like the blue color.  I went to a pottery store yesterday and got *more* colors of glaze.  Oh my, I see the beginning of a new color addiction...

-Linda

Linda Landig Jewelry 

Ocean Inspired

I have always been inspired by the sea. This week I happen to be in Florida visiting my daughter Audrey. We visited the ocean today and I got re-inspired all over again. :)

Inspiration...

Photo by me, taken today (Feb. 22), Florida Atlantic Coast 

Shells collected by me today

Craggy shell I found today - amazing color and texture!

The Beads...

Inspiration (photos by others, as noted)...

Atlantic Ocean by Merek Misztal

Ocean by Omar Fallaha

The Beads....

Inspiration (photos by others, as noted)...

Ocean by Orient-Express

Ocean by Katarina Stefanović

The Beads....

Inspiration (photos by others, as noted)...

Unknown source, via One Trick Pony

The Beads...

I end my stay in Florida this Thursday (back to the frozen North!). I'm sorry to leave so soon - I really enjoyed my brief re-aquaintance with my old friend the Sea.

beachcombing from Karen Totten on Vimeo.

The life of a bead

When I first started making ceramic beads, I didn't have a clue where to start. I searched around on the internet looking for information on how you baked the clay and created all the wonderful textures, colours and effects... I wanted to do everything, (I still do), but all I really knew was that you had to get it very hot for it to work, so you needed a kiln.

From those naïve beginnings, a few years down the line, I do take for granted the process of turning a lump of mud into a ceramic bead or pendant. For even the simplest design, it's a long process. You have to understand your materials, possess skill to create your imaginings, have patience, and a dose of luck to finish up with something worthy of passing on to others.

So today, I'd like to share the process and show you from start to finish the process of making a bead.

It all begins with a bag of mud. I like to use all types of clay, low fire, mid fire, high fire and Raku. Each has it's own properties and produces different results, but today, I'm using low fire earthenware.

Here's a piece of clay ready from the bag.

First, it's rolled in to a shape. I'm just keeping it simple and making a round. This only takes a few seconds, more complicated designs can take as long as you wish to spend on them, minutes to an hour or more.

Then it's poked with a skewer to create the hole.

For a simple bead, that's the end of the creation process, but for something a bit fancier, you have various stages of decoration, adding clay to create more dimension, stamping for texture, carving, shaping and smoothing to create a miniature work of art. The bead is then set aside to dry. Depending on the size of the work and the humidity, which in the rainy UK is usually pretty high, it can take from a day to a week to dry completely.

Once bone dry the clay can go through the first firing. The clay is gradually heated up to it's bisque temperature over a period of around 9 hours, then allowed to cool. If I start my kiln off in the morning, it's usually ready to open by the following morning.

The result is a bisque bead. The clay has transformed and become solid, but is still porous so that you can glaze it.

Next is the glazing. Glaze is made up from chemicals and stains and can be painted, dipped and sprayed. I use commercial glazes which come ready to paint on to your design. Each bead needs up to three coats, carefully applied to ensure a nice finish. When fired to the correct temperature, the glaze turns into a vitreous coating making the bead strong and waterproof. 

After cleaning up the holes to ensure they don't stick to the rods and don't have sharp glaze edges, in they go for another firing. This time, you can go a bit faster as the clay has gone through all the delicate stages of transformation during the bisque firing. My normal earthenware glaze firing takes about 6 hours to reach top temperature and is again left to cool.

Then comes the real fun... opening the lid!

I'm sure any one who creates with clay does the same as me and holds their breath while they take a first peek inside. There are lots of things that can go wrong during a firing, many of which I've experienced, but that just makes it all the more worthwhile when you see a great result from your days of work.

Caroline.

http://www.blueberribeads.co.uk