Hank Murrow on fri 18 feb 11
On Feb 18, 2011, at 4:46 PM, mel jacobson wrote:
>=3D20
> big kilns just mean you wait months to fire. then, if you have
> a bad firing...a total waste of your work. it happens.
Mel;=3D20
Once I helped a woman smash 2700 pots(all hers from a bad wood-firing) =3D
into the bed of her pickup. Then we took the sherds to the county dump =3D
and shoveled them out. Went to a good restaurant and she had whiskey =3D
sours while I downed a bottle of good Merlot over a longish dinner. Took =
=3D
some of the sting away at least temporarily.
My gas kiln is around 28 cuft and loads like a dream....... incredibly =3D
reliable. Started with two 14" x 28" shelves and designed around those.
I love the woodfiring process, the meals and the comaraderie, and the =3D
occasional racer....... yet I cannot see more than my own pleasure and =3D
education arising from it.
Cheers, Hank=3D
mel jacobson on fri 18 feb 11
i have a rule for building a kiln.
you take a typical weeks work, or what you can make
in 5-7 days. your pace, how you work.
take that number of pots and see how it will fit
in a kiln you may build.
there is the size.
i can make enough pots to fill my 45 cube kiln
in two days.
but, i don't throw every day. i do other things too.
trim second day, decorate, dry, bisque in my electrics.
and, of course dink around, drink tea and read books.
so, about a week to get ready for a firing of my glaze,
big kiln. not hard to do. an easy pace. 80-100 pots of a variety
of sizes.
far too many people build kilns they have to `chase`.
in other words, the kiln is always bigger than they can fill.
it makes for severe quilt, frustration and anger.
that is why i have kilns at the farm. a small stoneware kiln that
i can fire left overs from home. a big salt kiln for groups, and a
huge wood fired kiln that very strong, well balanced people fire
in a group. i would never try and do that alone.
zak spats has done that...but, he is a powerhouse. often kevin
caufield helps him.
and, zak's wife is a good loader. between zak and kev, 600 pots are a
walk in the park. the wood kiln is always ready for dear friends to fire.
they get the wood, prepare things. use my farm house to crash in.
the way things should work. it is a waste if not used.
big kilns just mean you wait months to fire. then, if you have
a bad firing...a total waste of your work. it happens.
i like that medium size. i can actually run tests in the entire
kiln and not break the bank. as some know, i will test a new glaze
with 80 pots. then i know. test tiles do nothing for me.
i have to see pots, with the glaze, fired. if it is bad, out it goes.
and, many of those pots still go in a show or sale...as...`new experiments`=
.
often they sell first.
who am i to tell folks what they like. does not matter to me.
if the stuff is total junk, it will not sell. i sure don't sell runny glaz=
es,
stuff with flaws, but if the color is not what i want...sell it.
my color sense, is not my customers sense.
their choice. people pay for what they want. chatty praise means nothing
to me. if you like it, want it, buy it.
save cheap talk for others. we have all been there with that sort of thing=
.
mel
from: minnetonka, mn
website: http://www.visi.com/~melpots/
clayart link: http://www.visi.com/~melpots/clayart.html
new book: http://www.21stcenturykilns.com
alternate: melpots7575@gmail.com
Lee on sat 19 feb 11
On Fri, Feb 18, 2011 at 9:54 PM, Hank Murrow wrote:
> On Feb 18, 2011, at 4:46 PM, mel jacobson wrote:
>>
>> big kilns just mean you wait months to fire. =3DA0then, if you have
>> a bad firing...a total waste of your work. =3DA0it happens.
>
> Once I helped a woman smash 2700 pots(all hers from a bad wood-firing) in=
=3D
to the bed
>of her pickup. Then we took the sherds to the county dump and shoveled the=
=3D
m out.
Hamada, Shimaoka and MacKenzie have all explained that a large
kiln is a way to shake our industrial desire to be control freaks.
During my 3 year apprenticeship, I hammered millions of
dollars of pots from my teacher's large noborigama. His large kiln
had five chambers, each with a different purpose. I did not see a
single firing of that kiln, where all five chambers got excellent
results. What always happened, was that one chamber would be superb,
while another would be a disaster.
We used to put hammered pots in a garbage hole behind the
two climbing kilns. But Sensei must have heard reports of some of
those rejected pots turning up for sale in shops, so instead of
throwing them in the hole, we had to hammer them in teams of two and
then put the shards in plastic bins, which were taken to the dump to
be buried.
--
=3DA0Lee Love in Minneapolis
http://mingeisota.blogspot.com/
=3DA0"Ta tIr na n-=3DF3g ar chul an tI=3D97tIr dlainn trina ch=3DE9ile"=3D9=
7that is, =3D
"The
land of eternal youth is behind the house, a beautiful land fluent
within itself." -- John O'Donohue
Mike on sat 19 feb 11
i can make enough pots to fill my 45 cube kiln
in two days.
but, i don't throw every day. i do other things too.
trim second day, decorate, dry, bisque in my electrics.
and, of course dink around, drink tea and read books.
And there's the rub. All of the other things that need doing other than
the pot making. Cleaning shelves, cleaning out the kiln, straightening
up the studio after a production cycle (my personal favorite... not),
photographing pots, getting them up on the shopping site or to your
gallery, prepping your clay, acquiring materials, prepping experiments,
mixing your glazes, cleaning up the fired pots, planning/designing what
to make, the list goes on....
Every bit larger that kiln gets, so does every job associated with it.
The making of the pots doesn't take all that much time in the scheme of
things.
Personally, I prefer a kiln just a little bigger than is 'comfortable',
mostly because I spent so much time with a kiln that was too small to
fire many and larger pieces. Also, I need something that forces me to
stretch because I am a rather lazy person. Usually I bite off more than
I can chew, and spend some uncomfortable months or more trying to catch
up to that train (doing that right now with the new wood kiln). More
often than not, though, after all is said and done, I've learned some
valuable lessons that far outweigh any regrets. At least so far.
As for big kilns and bad firings, yes they are a tragedy, but refires
can also come out pretty slick, and maybe you learn something new.
Mike
in Taku, Japan
http://karatsupots.com
http://karatsupots.blogspot.com
Workshop in Taku, Spring 2012: To Be Announced
(2011/02/19 9:46), mel jacobson wrote:
> i have a rule for building a kiln.
>
> you take a typical weeks work, or what you can make
> in 5-7 days. your pace, how you work.
>
> take that number of pots and see how it will fit
> in a kiln you may build.
>
> there is the size.
>
> i can make enough pots to fill my 45 cube kiln
> in two days.
> but, i don't throw every day. i do other things too.
> trim second day, decorate, dry, bisque in my electrics.
> and, of course dink around, drink tea and read books.
>
> so, about a week to get ready for a firing of my glaze,
> big kiln. not hard to do. an easy pace. 80-100 pots of a variety
> of sizes.
>
> far too many people build kilns they have to `chase`.
> in other words, the kiln is always bigger than they can fill.
> it makes for severe quilt, frustration and anger.
>
> that is why i have kilns at the farm. a small stoneware kiln that
> i can fire left overs from home. a big salt kiln for groups, and a
> huge wood fired kiln that very strong, well balanced people fire
> in a group. i would never try and do that alone.
> zak spats has done that...but, he is a powerhouse. often kevin
> caufield helps him.
> and, zak's wife is a good loader. between zak and kev, 600 pots are a
> walk in the park. the wood kiln is always ready for dear friends to
> fire.
> they get the wood, prepare things. use my farm house to crash in.
> the way things should work. it is a waste if not used.
>
> big kilns just mean you wait months to fire. then, if you have
> a bad firing...a total waste of your work. it happens.
> i like that medium size. i can actually run tests in the entire
> kiln and not break the bank. as some know, i will test a new glaze
> with 80 pots. then i know. test tiles do nothing for me.
> i have to see pots, with the glaze, fired. if it is bad, out it goes.
> and, many of those pots still go in a show or sale...as...`new
> experiments`.
> often they sell first.
>
> who am i to tell folks what they like. does not matter to me.
> if the stuff is total junk, it will not sell. i sure don't sell runny
> glazes,
> stuff with flaws, but if the color is not what i want...sell it.
> my color sense, is not my customers sense.
> their choice. people pay for what they want. chatty praise means
> nothing
> to me. if you like it, want it, buy it.
> save cheap talk for others. we have all been there with that sort of
> thing.
> mel
>
>
>
>
>
>
> from: minnetonka, mn
> website: http://www.visi.com/~melpots/
> clayart link: http://www.visi.com/~melpots/clayart.html
> new book: http://www.21stcenturykilns.com
> alternate: melpots7575@gmail.com
>
Joseph Herbert on sat 19 feb 11
Hello,
Two of the more-than-30 public clay venues I have used had relatively large
glaze kilns. The Clay Studio in Philadelphia has a kiln that must be close
to 100 cubic feet. This gas kiln must be some model of persistence, since
it is on the 3rd floor of a building just a couple blocks north of Market
street. It must have been a feat to get such a thing permitted,
constructed, inspected, and approved. But they did and it is. Because of
the volume (and size) of work produced, it fires fairly regularly. I seem
to remember at least three or more firings during a cycle of classes. They
also have the resident participants who add to the volume, along with some
"special guest artists" who often make rather large things.
There was a clay program at the Karamu House in Cleveland that had a rather
large kiln (about 50 cubic feet) and relatively few students. This resulte=
d
in perhaps just one firing per class cycle. Very difficult to get a feelin=
g
for glazes that way. It seems that part of the activity has stopped there
and they have gone more toward performing arts. This organization is not
far from the Cleveland Art Institute and there may have been a time when
there was some synergy between them. They had some standup German treadle
wheels that were interesting to use.
So, in these two cases, the larger kiln was close to perfectly sized for th=
e
situation, while the smaller was hopelessly too large. The advice about
careful selection of kiln size is vital. Given the influence that choice
has on the other activities, either studio work, or education, choosing
correctly is very important.
One might say that both psychologically and operationally a kiln that is
somewhat too small is better than a kiln that is somewhat too big. As is
demonstrated by some correspondents, you can have more than one. If the
first one is too large, you might never want more than one, if that.
Joe
Joseph Herbert
Training Developer
Steve and Joan Irvine on mon 21 feb 11
While travelling in Devon I visited two potters with very different =3D
kilns. Svend Bayer's wood kiln was large enough to have a dinner party =3D
in, but Bayer makes very large pots, and the kiln was well suited to his =
=3D
work cycle. I was surprised when I visited John Maltby's studio by how =3D
small his kiln was; perhaps 20-25 cu.ft. It made sense though when he =3D
explained how he works through ideas for forms and surface, and doesn't =3D
want to wait weeks or months to see the results of a new concept or =3D
experiment.
Getting your kiln size just right is important, and takes some personal =3D
insights into your own tempo of work and goals.
=3D20
Steve Irvine
www.steveirvine.com
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