Hulk

@Pres very cool, looks like a lot of work!  Are these for covid friendly communion services?
 
I have been working 60 hours a week at my real job, so haven't done a lot.  I did just open a glaze firing this last weekend though with some great stuff inside.  For some reason I've been throwing bottles and putting handles on them.

Hi folks, I have been working on some prototypes for pouring chalices. I have sent this image to the customer to see if I am heading in a direction he would accept. There are a variety of shapes, with a continued them of stem and bowl. I am more in favor of the deeper narrower bowls with closer to Golden Mean proportions, but tough to do exactly. All have two pouring spouts on opposites sides. Hoping to get a reply back soon.

 
best,
Pres

When I was in high school  did our Raku in our class room,  we pulled the pieces out of the one electric kiln the school had and put them in a galvanized bucket filled with newspapers and put a lid on it.  There was a big sink nearby and they were taken out of the bucket and washed while they were still hot.    This is the same teacher you left the kiln on all night and melted his pots all over the shelves.   He burned down the clay classroom a few years after I graduated,  the board of education had a huge gas kiln brought in to replace the small electric kiln lost in the fire.   He must of fired it on the weekends,   I can't imagine firing a gas kiln around students during class.    Denice

Yee haw---ain't nuthin' on my workbench cuz it's all on it's way to the kiln. Finally! 

The steeped in safety culture of the Steel Mill (where I worked for several years) changed my life - doesn't mean I don't make mistakes, doesn't mean I don't (stupidly/silly-ly) do dangerous things - just "see" somewhat differently.
A safety measure only has to "work" one time.
The opposite is, sadly, also true.

My second attempt at a self-draining soap dish works! Big thanks to Pres for supplying this suggestion:
Having a wall and a lip as two sort-of separate elements allowed me to cut a channel through the wall, but still have enough clay on the lip to pull and shape a spout. Now it allows the water to slide off, but not the soap!



 
 

I love the bill van guilder videos on his website.
hsin is very relaxing 
Simon Leach is great with fun classic tips now and then
tim see has some great videos 
ceramics monthly has some good uploads on your tube 
 
also in clay buddies (Facebook) they did a video  series since nceca couldn’t happen.
Nceca has released some of their videos too 
 

Yeah, I used the electric raku outside with and extension cord, always unplugged before opening kiln. Don't know as a problem, but read in one text where hot air is a conductor so I took precautions. Better safe.. . . .
best,
Pres

Re raku firing.  The first one I was involved with was in my teacher's basement.  A 10 cu ft electric kiln with  pulley that lifted the lid.  The shelves were built up so that only the top layer was used.  Once the pots reached the required temp the lid was lifted (I don't know if the kiln was turned off)  and the pots were tonged into garbage cans through the basement window.
How many rules does that break? It never happened again and the house didn't burn down (miracle) and no one was hurt (another miracle.
Lin

My personal dumbest moment was back in college while loading the outdoor soda kiln in sub zero temperatures while not turning on the gas burners to heat the inside of the kiln. The posts and the shelves were so cold (they were kept outside) they froze the wadding, and when it melted, it shifted the stack and the whole thing fell over. I was not popular for this particular move. 

And sometimes that concern, doesn't even involve us.
I was talking to a teacher, at a nearby District, during our Conference Art Show.  Her students had some nice Raku pieces and I asked about the set up they used.  She informed me that she used their normal electric classroom kiln, and had a nearby exterior door, where they carried the wares for reduction.  I asked, "So you turn the kiln *OFF* before reaching in with the *METAL* tongs right?!"  She kind of chuckled and said, that she hadn't thought about that.  Now she could have been using sarcasm.  However, know that I've known her for several years, I'm honestly not sure she was...

The steeped in safety culture of the Steel Mill (where I worked for several years) changed my life - doesn't mean I don't make mistakes, doesn't mean I don't (stupidly/silly-ly) do dangerous things - just "see" somewhat differently.
A safety measure only has to "work" one time.
The opposite is, sadly, also true.

Silly, yep; many, many ...and just three years in!
Mentioned previously (somewhere in here), my inexpensive scale came with two calibration weights - ooh, I thought that was a mistake, haha! Having calibrated the scale with one of the two weights, the reading, of course, was off by 50%, which I finally caught when I'd learned about adjusting specific gravity (glazing) - my cheap plastic graduated cylinder is wrong! Oh.
Up to then, no problem mixing glaze batches, as the proportions were ok, however, wasn't very happy comparing my one, two and three pound pieces with what I was seeing others do online. Haha! Have been a bit happier since recalibration, as a pound of clay goes a bit further than half a pound...
No one got hurt.
Perhaps not silliest, however, for me, silly includes dangerous and disastrous, e.g. (not ceramic related), cutting tree/shrub branches at an angle, well away from the next join, leaving behind a long sharp stake and obvious potential for injury/death.

Hmmmm, off the top of my head, I'm going to go with this one:
During my fifth year teaching, I had a Ceramics I class, in which I also had a couple "helpers".  I forget what that District called them, but essentially they got a credit for helping a teacher, with whatever they needed.  Generally I would only have one per class, but for some reason, I accepted both at the same time.
Anyway, the way we recycled clay, was by having the students hand mix the wet reclaim, with a dry clay powder.  I realize now, this was it's own level of stupid, and it was just something I did, because that's how it had been done by the previous instructor.  I had a couple students, who  needed more clay, and the clay powder was out.  So I sent my helpers to get another bag from storage.  The students mixed it with the reclaim, and that was that...  UNTIL, some of the projects made with that clay were fired.  Said projects partially melted.  Unlike several of the other stories, this was not a Low Fire/ Mid-High Fire issue, because we only used Low Fire.  Instead, it was a label reading issue.  The helper students grabbed a bag of dry GLAZE powder, without looking at what it was.  Am I partially to blame?  Absolutely!  I should have double checked, and in their defense, the bags looked identical, minus the stamped label, which is partially abbreviated. 
Luckily, there wasn't enough glaze mixed with the clay, to damage anything.  The projects didn't even stick to the shelf.  Basically they were large scale Egyptian Paste sculptures.
And fortunately, the contaminated clay was easy to find, and dispose of.
The worst part was that the students lost a project that they worked on.  They still got a proper grade for it, they just had nothing to take home. 

Like everyone else I have seen my share of kiln disasters.   The worse one was the year I was graduating from college,  it was the last firing for the year.   A friend had begged the master students to put some of her pots in the firing.   Some how she had gotten some low fire clay mixed in,  her pieces on the top shelf melted and ran down the pots below.   I am not sure if every piece was ruined but it sure looked like it.   I didn't have any work in it I had already started working with C5/6 oxidation and usually fired at home.   A few month later I came home to find a dozen 5 gal buckets of dried up clay sitting in my driveway.  She had left a note saying she was giving up clay.   I called her and asked what cone the clay was and she said she didn't know.   Fortunately we had a area in our yard that always need fill because of a creek.    Denice

I remember the salt, and gas firing I did. I was a grad student at Penn State taking Summer classes. My firing partner and I used a small salt kiln outside that had no door, had to be bricked up. We loaded up ware from everyone including a lot of our own. All went well, until about 1am, when the bricked in door started bulging out about 1 1/2 f feet. We scrambled around to try and find a way of bracing it up and did so with some T supports that were somewhere nearby. We got to where we should put in the salt, did that right, but did not close the damper before hand. Really dry salt firing, but not a failure, if the door had collapsed I don't have any idea what would have happened. I don't think it would have been pretty!
 
best,
Pres

In school we had three different firings, 5 kilns.  We had lowfire/bisque, cone 6, and cone 10.  The lowfire and cone 6 were always done in big top loaders, and the cone 10 stuff was saved for the big walk-in gas kiln outside.  
Students would put their work to be fired on big rolling shelves clearly labeled with the firing temp, well one of the TAs grabbed two carts of porcelain and loaded them in the gas kiln, grabbed the stoneware and loaded it, and after the professor checked, gave it the go ahead to start the firing.  Well one of the porcelain carts was not porcelain, it was a bunch of another TAs lowfire slipware.  
They had to replace sections of the floor, and after that, no more lowfire clay, and all clays had to be purchased from the school.
 
I talked to a person who is currently going there and it sounds like they're down to two clays, cone 10 stoneware or cone 10 porcelain, and use a cone 10 stoneware for raku.  But now they also do 2 wood firings a year, which I'm very jealous of.
It wasn't the person loading being silly though, it was the other TA who was pretty much trying to run a business out of the school studio.  He got in trouble for making sinks and selling them as well.

Silly or stupid-its a toss up
lets see back in art school early 70s -well lets call him Ed (to protect the stupid) stacked the 36 cubic Alpine with bisque ware one late afternoon and started a candle falme on kiln and left-I was throwing late after after a few hours we all heard a huge Kabam sound and dust shot out of kiln room in huge clouds. What the heck we all slowly went it to see what that cpould have been???
Seems Ed did not know about lining up all the posts on top of each other on shelves-he just put them where he felt like and the whole load collapsed to the floor taking out all the greenware-all 26 cubic feet of it.Many people where not happy with Ed after that.
Lets move forward about 5 years and Ed was firing his 1st homemade catanary  arch kiln-it was propane-he had trouble lighting it-has the gas on and then turned it off and went for more matches-started the burners again and Kabam as the kiln had lots of heavy propane still trapped in foor area it went off like a bomb. The arch went up -he was crouched to the side  and was knocked away of front wall as both front and rear walls blew out and arch came down in pieces-a complete loss of wares and kiln. He was ok but shaken.I was about 25 feet away at the time.
Fast forward about two more years 
Ed called me to see if I was interested in buying all his stuff which I did at that time.I figure I saved many many  a pots from destruction getting Ed out of clay .
Never heard from Ed again but if you hear a huge Kabam sound he may  around still.

how about the day when i was loading the kiln and i readjusted some items on a shelf and put the shelf down, loaded another one above it and continued to the top.   when i opened the kiln and removed the shelves, one had a vase stuck to the bottom of it.   there was no post next to the vase and it was about a quarter of an inch shorter than the other 2 posts across from the vase so i never realized i had put the shelf down on the vase and not a post.    
and i thought i had formed the habit in the beginning of putting the posts in first before loading anything.  

HI folks, nothing in the pool again. I have been loading the kiln today, and it reminded me of something that happened years ago that might make a good topic with a few laughs. Seems we may need a good laugh lately. So my newest contribution to the Question of the Week is:
QotW: What is the silliest thing you have done or seen done dealing with Ceramics? I was teaching Ceramics 1 at the HS, and someone asked me to come check out her small kiln. She said that the kiln setter was not working and that she had over fired her last load. I went to her house, the 6 cubic foot kiln was setting on the floor, and the lid was up on the kiln. It was obvious she had overfired, but had cleaned up pretty well as she used a shelf to protect the floor of the kiln. So I started checking out the setter to see what the problem might be. All seemed to be in order, but the drop tab would not swing down. I asked her if this was the first time firing, and she said no, that she had fired the kiln several times over the last few years. Hmmm. Did something happen to the kiln lately I asked. No, we had just finished cleaning up the area, and moved it back into place. I started looking around and noticed a handle on the floor near the kiln. Turns out they had left the dust pan on the floor, and as it was late at night they had placed one leg on the dust pan. Since she didn't have shelves other than the floor shelf she did not realize the kiln was not level.
 QotW: What is the silliest thing you have done or seen done dealing with Ceramics? 
 
best
Pres

Here are the three pots I made, glazed using every glaze (^04 commercial) that I could find in my house/studio.  They are in alphabetic order until I ran out, then went searching for more.  
They are slab-built, around 200 mm/8 inches tall.  Biggest things I've made, and all three in one week.  All fired separately, couldn't get more than one in the kiln at a time.
Had some cookie catchers/saucers hanging around so glazed them and put them on the bottom shelf.
 

( for me.(It took hold of me in the middle 90s..." )-tuna fishing that is-yes I'm 67 now and clay started for me  in 69-70-Diving with scuba in 82.-snorkled since a kid-still am a kid really at heart.This covid has slowed me down at a great time as I was trying to let off the gas and now thats easy.

"It took hold of me in the middle 90s..." 
Thought you were in early sixties (ba-bing).
Good question! Just wrapping up year two of retirement, hence, it resonates.
The importance of social activity/contact is highlighted by our current situation - it's an important part of sanity maintenance; have been missing trips to the gym, meeting new people out and about, and weekly brunch with friends.
Swimming and cycling are important sanity maintenance activities for me, also reading and projects.

Hi VS!
Grease may be more appropriate?
:|
Ahem, well, finding the source - could be a bearing, loose pulley, squeaky belt, something rubbing in the motor - might be a good first step. Does the wheel squeak the same when running in the other direction? If not, try looking at the motor brushes. Try crawling about, that is, listening from all possible angles, to pinpoint the source. If you have a few miles on your ears, try enlisting a young person (with undamaged hearing).
Lubrication may not be the solution; could be adjustment, replacing a part, etc. is required.
"Squeaky wheel gets the grease" Heh.
 

Probably my normal job.  I am lucky enough to have a creative day job, I make teeth for people.  A lot of the movements and smoothness is the same just exaggerated with clay.  I'm also surrounded by old equipment and chemical containers and stuff like that, it really puts me into a weird container mindset.
My wife and I also love going thrifting and I draw a lot of inspiration from old junk we find when we are out doing that.