Rae Reich

Yes, I'm very sore... Mostly shoulders and knees.  The knees are all bruised up from crawling, didnt think to get some knee pads til I was far too gone for it to matter.  My wife is already tired of hearing my groaning haha

Starting to load a glaze firing,  suppose to have a decent day Tuesday.  I like to open the window in the kiln room when I am firing.   I have a exhaust fan in the ceiling and the Skutt vent system on the kiln but when I am firing my big Skutt I need a little more air.    Denice

For folks happy to be rolling in the mud, or rolling mud,  you wouldn’t think they wouldn't be so sensitive to the great outdoors and it’s inhabitants.
looks like these electric quotes are going higher.  Here is to hard working trade people everywhere!
LOL

Aaah, memories! Our first home had a low crawlspace - get between joists to roll from front to back.
The word "swell" reminds me - suggest long shirtsleeves and pants, both secured with rubber bands (plural), and pants tucked in socks, collar fully buttoned up, and look look look before entering. I find both black widows an' fiddlers (brown recluse) in the oddest places, e.g. in the garage/studio, right where I'd put my hand; tucked up in the garbage can hand hold; outside the front door, between knee and forehead level. 

Running conduit under the house today, WHAT A CHORE.  24 inches of clearance and I'm a big 220lb 6'2" monster so not a whole lot of room to work.  Hopefully this pays off in the next few weeks and I'll be firing an electric kiln!!!
Wire arrives via UPS sometime next week and I can run the wire and call the inspector if everything goes swell.  Fingers crossed I did everything OK, it looks good anyway.

Nice holder!
Just catching up on custom orders for mugs and underglazed stuff. Also working through fixing an existing Bristol glaze for the studio . Arrrrgh dislike these glaze recipes  but almost done, I think.
After spraying countless ornaments  and now these little mugs, cups, treasure boxes I think  I need a throwing break from this stuff! Took a picture of myself spraying and I do not appear to be excited. LOL
 

I have been out of touch with pottery for a very long time. Just getting back into it, a lot to try and remember but this is my first project I'm working on.

I got tired of fishing around in a plastic bag full of holders, so I made a simple Holder holder to hold my holders.

Been firing some more tests soluble salts and consecutive followups on good leads from tests. Pots on the left were fired at various temperatures in saggars and foil saggars. pots on the right were retired at 1700F. Additional coats on salts were added.
 

Snow day--working on turning the Meet Mr. Hammer bin (by the window) into shards for drainage in the bottom of pots, the  inventory/photo task bins, set up for my helper to process,  & green smalls, dry and ready to add to my pending bisque load.
 

1st bisque of 2019, everything looks good so far!

sorry i was not clear.  i do not mean pressing down vertically on the whole clay surface, i mean forcing the sharp indentation into a curve, not a sharp angle.  that means shoving the dowel horizontally along the work surface  into the deep angle to round it.

Engineering alert!
Just a crazy add here and this has happened to several folks drilling holes in flat clock faces. Our best theory thusfar: It turns out clay acts like many materials with stress developing as  result of the drilled hole. I had a friend that made clock faces, very flat and often thin for their overall size. On several occasions the faces split completely in half during the glaze firing (Like 1/2" apart as the stress ejected each half). This can be common and present itself in flat faced items and likely presents itself similar to the stress and strain we find on other drilled materials. Our solution was to thicken the slab in the area of the bored hole one to two diameters larger than the hole …….. (reinforce with a washer over it, how original we are!))
The hard lesson: always chamfer and smooth any hole cut in the clay so as not to provide an easy path for the material to begin cracking. The forces around it will be real and will appear, so always do your best. Kind of like concrete shrinkage cracks developing at an inside corner.
Kind of geeky but good clay construction practice likely will help avoid disappointment later. Nice to see everyone has a favorite way to chamfer these.
 
 

Ha....this one was made just for me! These are face-pressed. The white one is slip cast, the next is porcelain w/clear and Pallidium glaze, next is stoneware  with granite dust , multiple firings, micro glitter & a bit of gold enamel (mounted in an open frame); the last was angama-fired.   HMS is my Hidden Mask Series--a bit of self-absorption with therapeutic properties.  The mask concept, using my own face, emerged in defiance of the ceramics instructor who told me "Art is not therapy" (no, art is spirituality in drag) and wanted me to quit because I was falling apart a bit at the time and I was arguing that I should be allowed to hand build if I didn't want to throw. Titled in order: Art Is; Two-faced Selfie; Assembling the Surviver, and; Emerging.

Recently Johnny K. Posted the following on my profile:
Hey, Pres, How 'bout this for QOTW: How do you see yourself in clay?
One of the things about taking college level Ceramics courses it the challenges you are presented with. In the last course I took on Raku the professor had a thing for Xian warriors...the terracotta army unearthed in China. One of our assignments was to sculpt a version of one of these figures...with a twist. We had to incorporate some aspect of our current life situation into the sculpture. I don't consider myself a sculptor, but I wanted to give it my best shot. Since my primary interests at this point in my life are ceramics, farming, and photography but none of the statues were suitable for the pottery or photography aspects, I chose the farmer idea. It was a real challenge, but a productive one. Here is a photo of my Raku "John Warrior" self-portrait. , and the challenge..."How do you see yourself in Clay".
 
 
 
So How do those of you out there see yourself in clay?
 
best,
Pres

Dipping plastic straws into WD40 helps.

I use a short piece of dowel or stick to clear the straw when punching multiple times. 
Saving any size plastic straws I come across now....an endangered species ;)

@shawnhar, if the clay is isn't too dry you can use a straw to cut the holes with. Snip the end of the straw at an angle, the clay you are removing stays in the straw which you can cut off after you've finished punching holes. (milkshake straws are a good size or for bigger holes bubble tea straws)

finishing a few pieces from a raku firing 

Have you tried putting a fan blowing on low to help dry things out a little? I have similar weather conditions here in Citrus Heights, CA and found the fan helps speed up the drying process...

Kind of, I do them while shaping with my steel rib.  I pull the cylinder and then scrape the slip off and shape the base at the same time, then I will fine tune the shape from inside with a small wood rib.  I probably should go back and sharpen them up again after, the line is just the line of slip that the steel rib leaves.  
Should have seen me sitting there in my shed trying to figure out how to do it nicely like the ones I mistakenly left like that last time. I like the way glaze breaks over the horizontal line though, it's really nice.
If you were talking about the fluting, I did that at soft leather before I put on the handles
Also the "electrician" won't be here tomorrow, mainly because I found out he's not an electrician.  

Having an electrician come out tomorrow to install the kiln circuit.  Fingers crossed it turns out well.
I have a bunch of mugs I've been working on this week, trimmed, fluted and handled a few today, pulled more handles and will finish the rest up tomorrow, might even give the electric kiln a run if everything goes well!
 

@Chilly, nice chocolate glaze! Serving dishes are pretty, too.

if you eliminate the bowl with the white glaze interior, you would have two sets of similar looking work when viewed from above.

I personally see an interesting similarity yet contrast in the top one and bottom right. They have matching glazes yet different offsetting contrast and the diversity in the texture yet similar textural design would make me want to display them together.