QothW: Describe a day from your ceramics life that left you thinking "that was a bad day."

[Pres]

Mea(GEP)  lately posted in the question pool. . . . 

 Describe a day from your ceramics life that left you thinking "that was a bad day." We've all had them. Here's your chance to vent. Or confess. And others can commiserate, or forgive. 

Bad days, I have certainly had them, but I'll stick with bad days of making pots. All of us have had bad days with over firings, with elements burning out, and having to repair the kiln and refire. We have all had situations where a wind would come up and blow over a booth shelf or in some cases blow the entire tent over wrecking much of inventory. In the long run these are learning experiences. We learn from them and pick up and go on.

So I will tell of my first salt firing. I was a grad student at Penn State, taking a 500 level ceramics course, firing my first salt firing. I had fired gas kilns before, that had doors on them, and we had a catenary arch kiln that had to bricked up to close. This kiln was about 30 cu ft as I recall. I had most of my work from the Summer, and another student was sharing the kiln and work load with me. We also had some pieces donated from others interested to fill the kiln load. We did the standard wadding, after much research on formulas, etc. We also looked into firing the kiln, but found little about the hour to hour process at the time. After bricking the door up in the afternoon we started the firing and all went well until about midnight when the door started to bulge out a bit, we were at orange heat or 2000F.  The door continued to bulge outward, until it was in danger of  collapsing. At that time at night very few people were around, and even less that knew what to do. We ended up going to the junk area digging through to find a couple of steel T shaped cross bars that we used to gently push the kiln bricks back inward propping the door closed.  We got close to the temp that we were supposed to introduce the salt, and used some trays to pour it in in the salt port. We kept right on firing until temp, and then shut off the kiln. Yep, if you ever ran a salt kiln, you would know to introduce the salt, close the dampers for a while, and then reopen, and close the dampers after firing.   Our pieces were not disastrous, but quite a dry salt that was not as expected. The write up afterwards was quite extensive, and we could have kicked ourselves several times over on all of the mistakes we made in the firing, including the amount of pressure in the kiln causing the bricked up door to bulge.

 

best,

Pres

 

[Marcia Selsor]

Pres. those experiences expand the learning curve faster than not problems that can be sheer luck. 

I was a resident potter and caretaker back in 1972 at a religious estate in Upstate NY. I salvaged fire bricks from an old broiler in the woods as well as purchasing some insulation bricks. I fabricated the burners for propane with blowers. First firing I felt like a cloud maker with the amount of steam coming out of those bricks. Took it slow.  Successful but really slow 32 hour firing. The outer layer was insulation bricks not yet added in this photo. BTW foil disintegrates and is useless.

Marcia

 

[C.Banks]

Someone who wasn't me turned up the air pressure in a waste oil kiln without knowing much more than more pressure = more oil = more heat.

The kiln roof melted and cracked badly. The heart went out of that kiln that day. It was never repaired and sat empty for over ten years till it got dismantled.

That was a bad day.

[glazenerd]

If the question said "days", instead of one; would be much easier to answer.  So now I have to pick from my top 100.. Hmm?  I will go with the 17" drop in sink mold that I worked on ( and off) for six months. All I had left was to finish the drain assembly attachment, when I CRACKED ......( insert rant here).

nerd

wait..one more: when I placed a kiln shelf and heard my brand new type S thermocouple snap.

okay last one: when I fired 108 pieces of 9 x 12 crystalline tile in my large front loader and forgot to add the seeding agent. Opening the front loader in anticipation of filling a large order.. ( insert rant here.)

[Guest JBaymore]

The day years and years and years ago I unloaded my whole noborigama load into the shard pit.  Almost bankrupted me.  (Technically.... my fault for not heeding my own tag line of , "test, test, test".)

best,

..........................john 

[Chilly]

Bad day last week, when I couldn't get the master out of a newly-made plaster mould.

Good day this week, when they eventually parted company.  (After sawing the mould into two pieces, and  use of a bolster chisel and hammer.  The master was cast-iron, so no damage to it, and very little to the plaster.)

[Denice]

I was taking a sculpture class at night and I had just finished a large bas relief of a Lion.   My teacher was so taken with it she said I needed to make a silicone mold of it.  So I did my research and put the silicone on it,  I could not get it to budge.   She said I could take it home and burn it off in my kiln,  what a disaster.   My kiln was in the basement and smoke started billowing through the house.   I got my son out of the house and ran up to the third floor and turned on our whole house  fan,  opened a window in the kitchen and held my breath when I went to the basement to turn off the kiln.   We waited outside until the smoke stop, it was quite impressive,  we were hoping no one else could see it and call the fire department.  Once we were back inside the house seemed alright until we got to the kitchen.  There was stalagtites hanging from the kitchen ceiling and it had turned yellow.  Fortunately it was a small kitchen and we had just recently painted the ceiling,  so the next day I vacuumed the ceiling and repainted.   My husband was out of town and he would have freaked out about something like this.   When he got home a few days later I told him what happened,  he just said looks like you took care of it.   Phew!    Denice