Glazing and Firing a Small Batch

This is the last week of school for the district, but the college finished last week, so I got some under glazing done yesterday and some glazing done this morning. I'm firing again today and hope to get a little extra glazing done today so that I can fire a kiln once more this week.

purple underglaze painted on top of fired orange background underglaze (don't worry, it will be wiped away, next)

Yesterday I had trouble getting warm in my studio so I kept taking hot tea breaks to try to warm up and therefore didn't get much accomplished. I finished up most of my under glazing, but not all of it. I have three pieces left to finish, as well as some colored glaze I plan to spray later today.

work waiting to be underglazes and glazed

This morning, though it was a little wet and fairly chilly, I set up my little spray booth outside and sprayed most of the small pieces with a clear glaze. The clear glaze is annoying to apply, since the pieces tend to roll around if you hit them to hard. The glazed pieces are also annoying to load in the kiln since they each need to be set on stilts. The pieces are glazed on all sides, but if I set the glazed side directly on the shelf, the silica in the glaze would melt, sticking the whole piece to the shelf. With a stilt, the piece is held up by a small metal point and the fired glaze just pops off.

glazed work waiting to be loaded in the kiln

I also reapplied glaze to a few mugs that I had fired a while back. The first, fired coat of glaze wasn't thick enough so I added more and am refiring them to melt the glaze better.

reglazed mugs and a sculpture base in the kiln

The kiln is firing today and should be out tomorrow. My to-do list, as always, is long, and I vaguely hope that I might fire twice, glaze more work, clean the studio and put together fired work and bike parts before Christmas. I probably won't get all of this done, since I also have a bit of work to do for school.

my kiln, firing