Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Glaze firing completed

These are the beads I had on the top shelf. The pendants with white and green centers were set on trivets (previous post) and had glass in the center and glaze on the edges and backs. The other three hung on a wire. The two larger pendants are glazed with Mayco's Bluesurf. I love the rich blue which breaks green in the design. It took 3 coats. It looks juicy but no drips.
This 4" bowl was also glazed with Mayco's Bluesurf. No green due to no designs to break the blue glaze up. It's a beautiful mottled blue just the same but something to keep in mind for next time.


With closer scrutiny, this crazy glaze test bowl reveals some interesting overlaps of 4 Mayco glazes: Alabaster, Bluesurf, Northwoods, and Maycoshino. More testing to be done!
I am very pleased with the results of this firing but also puzzled. I put in self supporting cone 5 cones just for the heck of it....one on the top shelf and one on the very bottom. The cone on the left was on the top shelf. The cone on the right did not look like it reached cone 5 but the pottery looked good, with a nice  glaze melt...no blisters or pinholes. Maybe the glazes I used are very forgiving and have a larger firing range than they claim. Any thoughts?

Glaze firing set-up



First glaze firing of the Skutt kiln at the center. Digital kilns are very easy to fire unless of course you press the wrong button! I was trying to clear the previous settings and pressed the Menu button. Bad idea. That, turns out, is designed to set specific temperature programs and possibly over ride and change default settings. Did Not want to do that but then couldn't exit that particular Menu. Somehow, I did manage to exit without changing any settings (wish I knew how I did that!). Set it up for a cone 5 firing, no pre-heats, no holds and then got a digital read out that was no where to be found on the on-line manual or anywhere on the internet for that matter. "COST" Could it mean the obvious. ..the cost of each firing or was it initials with meaning such as "cone offset system toggle" ???? I didn't feel safe pressing "start" until I knew what it meant. I emailed Skutt customer service, which is great, by the way. Yes, it was the cost of each firing! A very new feature that will calculate the cost of each firing if you enter the cost of your kilowatts. Good to know.