Mel Jacobson on sun 15 feb 98
it was great fun for high school students to melt glass in their pots.
it was a good teaching tool............seeing the glass melt and bond
with the glaze.
it can be a little flakey so do not use on `to eat from pots`...decor only.
any good quality window glass/or real glass bottles...(wine).
have also used colored marbles.
we have added oxides on top of the glass....and you can use the lori
leary trick of using a salt shaker to sprinkle oxides.
i think fairly flat bottomed pots with straight sided walls work the best.
had a student run experiments in making a glass bottom on a big
vase form....(would not let him make beer mugs.)
he got it to work.
made a throw away cup to set the pot in...filled with silica sand..
set pot in.............fill with broken glass.
it worked...fired to about cone 5 or so...have done it just for fun
in the cone 11 kiln............always crackles real big.
glass shrinks different than the clay.
don't let it spill....makes a real mess. i had students make
a soap dish...(hand built)...flat bottomed, with side walls.......filled with
glass..........and then used india ink in the crackle....
very nice project.
kids loved them...then they would make all kinds of them...drove me
nuts.......i would put a limit of 20 soap dishes per kid.
it is strange...........it you put limits as to how many pots students can
make.....they will take you to the limit....if you assign a certain number
they will go to that number and stop. i loved to tell the advanced kids
that they could not make over 200 pots a quarter. often they would push me
to the limit.....it made me smile. (who was that tom sawyer?)
(story)
had a wonderful kid, made pots like mad...good student in other
classes...real good. he had to go to a big academic university...
family tradition. so....of course he took clay. and found that
the university only fired electric kilns...(of course the prof did not
know how to fire the gas kilns) he called me one day at school....
said`can you teach me to fire a gas kiln over the phone?`...i said
`yes, i suppose so`. `well, do it then...i want to fire this kiln.`
so.....i did.......it was a brand new alpine...he did not think it had ever
been fired....he got a really long phone line......placed it next to the kiln.
gave me the model number, all the info.....and we tried all the
safety devices..............and they all worked...found the stack exhaust.
it worked........so he loaded a bisque...turned it on......made the
adjustments......and fired the thing.
great.......the next time he did a glaze..(all my glazes, learned how to
make them on the phone.)....and learned that damn kiln.
fired it for four years.....started to do other student pots, helped
everyone...........he had no limits.
now he is a surgeon...bet he is a good one.
mel.mn
http://www.pclink.com/melpots
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