hana's 8th class

Only two classes left after this! Next class will be glazing, and the last class will be the pit fire at Gary's house. That means this was the last class to prepare stuff for the last bisque firing! Also, it was the class for preparing the pieces for the pit fire, which is actually pretty complicated it turns out. I had a lot of work to do.

First things first, I had to trim the pieces I wanted to pit fire before I could further prepare them. I set myself up at a wheel. I tried a new wheel this time since most of them were free, and lo, the one I used was completely silent! Halleluiah! Plus, the foot pedal was smooth, so I didn't have to use my hand on the manual speed control.

Trimming was pretty easy to do. I had created three round forms last time I was in class, and they were all really round, so it was easy to center them again and trim the bottoms. I picked the best two of the three forms and set them in the warm kiln to dry a bit more.

Then I set out to trim some of my other pieces. I had lots of pieces at this stage actually, I think 7 total. I started trimming my square bowl. I set it down on the wheel upside down and just stared at it for a while. How does one trim something that's not round? Plus the base was all squooshed from when I had to yank it off the wheel when I made it. After a couple tips from a neighbor, I tried to just ignore the whole square part and just focus on the wonky round part at the very bottom (now top). I had to treat my arm as a lathe, by trying to keep it still out in space and just trimming the outer most stuff off first. I had a good inch or so of junk to take off, since part of the wonkiness was caused by a large indent I had made with my thumb when yanking it off the wheel. I had to trim all the way in to the bottom of that indent.

About half way through, I took a break to start preparing my pit fire pieces. So, what I had to do was "burnish" the pieces. You brush terra sigillata onto the piece, let it sit for a moment to dry, then you rub it in. You can use a variety of tools to rub it in, but apparently the most popular in my class was a crumpled up plastic bag. So you rub it in all over, and then do it again. Each layer takes about 10 minutes to coat, dry, and rub, and we were recommended to do 6 layers or more. Some people did 10 or 15 layers. The more layers, the shinier your piece gets until finally some people's pieces looked like polished marble. It was amazing. My pieces developed a smooth luster, but didn't get shiny since I had to keep going back to the wheel and trimming another piece.

For the rest of the night, I alternated with trimming a piece and then doing another layer of terra sig. I eventually trimmed my square bowl down to a nice foot. Hurrah! I wasn't sure that was going to make it. When I finished I did notice that the bottom got pretty thin, I'm lucky I stopped when I did and didn't trim through the bottom.

I also trimmed my weird piece that collapsed when I was trying to make a round form. It got a couple of appreciative comments from people, so I'm glad I kept it. It really does look strange.

I also trimmed my one tall piece (I didn't do the two layers like we were shown, but even with the one layer it got taller than anything else I've thrown). That was pretty easy to trim since it had dried out a bit. If it was wetter I was worried the height would be a problem, maybe causing it to collapse on itself.

Finally, I trimmed a little piece I threw I think the first day and never went back to. I was going to make a little pot with lid, but I never made a lid, and it was too late now. So I trimmed off the lip I had made for the lid to turn it just into a little bowl/cup thing (something to put random little stuff in!).

The last half hour I spend frantically cleaning my wheel and getting as many more layers on my pit fire pieces as I could. I think I ended up with about 6 layers on each piece, which isn't too shabby.

Next time (not next week, due to Thanksgiving) we will glaze all remaining items, and also bring stuff to wrap our pit fire pieces in. Gary suggested experimenting by bringing anything in that burns. Seaweed (the salt is especially good), sticks of lavender, pine cones, grass, weeds, whatever. Also copper wire, if anyone has any. I guess that will leave nice lines of green on the piece. Exciting! I'm going to have to go collecting.