Yeeehoo!

This Saturday the club is firing the Big Gas Kiln for the first time! It has been a long time coming, a few years in the works, so it will be great to get the first firing done for the approval and formalities to be completed now she has been installed with gas fittings, flues and other bits n bobs.

The ever so patient Buddha and has been contemplating the state of Greenware since early 2008! Belinda, his maker is very excited to have him fired this weekend.  We are expecting an 11-12 hour firing, so the burners will start around 6am. Food and merriment will be had to celebrate! I will update after the weekend with photos of the day.

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Saturday looked like it was going to rain, we erred about whether we would fire up the Raku, there was a lot of it! We needed some wood, so we went to collect wood from a nearby construction site, yay freebies!! I am most proud of the ladies climbing through the heap to collect the smallest bits. The firing which started off well… At around 800′C we ran out of wood we had already had on us, and so we started using the newly acquired wood. The temp dropped and we were losing the battle to get her up at all over 300′C. We worked out [some while later] it was because the wood was wetter then we first thought. I ducked off to the local service station for a bag of kindling, which got her fired up temperature in no time!

We were testing some new glazes Anna made up and we got some lovely surprises! We are hoping to recreate this with our next firing, as the glaze ran quite a bit as was in the kiln for over 2.5 hours! longest raku I have witnessed hehe. Was another great day even if it was a little exhausting hehe..

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I’ve been so busy I forgot to post about the Raku test firing…

A few weeks ago we fired a the new Raku kiln a few members at the club helped me build. Belinda donated the bin, Kevin cut, drilled, welded and added the flue. Anna & Ange answered many many questions I had. I had the best job, fixing the ceramic fibre – that stuff is iiitchy!!

She fired up really well and very fast for her maiden firing! It was a great afternoon :)

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This is Shoji demonstrating around 1968.

Hypnotic!

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