Comment

Comment by Norm Stuart on June 19, 2015 at 4:48pm

Just as many suspected, this sculpture was just a little too thick, even with a high grog stoneware coupled with a 12 hour pre-heat after two days in the sun. The artist wants to take it with him to Taiwan on Monday so it had to be fired before then.

It looks terrific, except that the face started off on the head, before the kiln firing, instead of on the hand where I placed it after firing.  The head was hollow, but without an opening.

You can see the steam cracks throughout the body forced open by the superheated steam trying to escape at 1,050 F. It began the firing 23" tall and is now 3" shorter.

Comment by Norm Stuart on June 18, 2015 at 7:24pm

I spent more than an hour arranging and rearranging the tubes until I found a positioning I liked - a repeated pattern with a simple diagonal contrast complemented by one defectively shaped tube in the front.  By the time I decided all the parts had to get dunked in the sink before I could assemble it.

As expected, anything which comes out of the extruder imperfect only gets worse as it dries and is fired. Unless you want the misshapen bits, you have to send them back through the extruder for a second chance at life.

We currently have a nice kiln-sized sculpture in our kiln currently which someone at our studio made.

Common wisdom suggests it's so thick it will explode during the kaolin to meta-kaolin conversion (which releases 12% of its weight in superheated steam) in spite of spending days in the sun.

I'm agnostic only because it's formed from a clay with a high percentage of grog and I programmed a 12 hour pre-heat just to be sure evaporative water is gone. But I'll know by tomorrow evening.

If worse comes to worse, we have a vacuum cleaner.

Comment by Denice E. Demuth on June 18, 2015 at 6:58pm

The tubes are very interesting and  they have some unusual attraction for me. Maybe I'll figure it out if I study them a bit longer.   Denice