New Drying Cabinet

This is our old fridge, now living in the studio, doing duty as a drying cabinet. Since we were going away and I wasn't sure how well this would work, I covered the pots with plastic as insurance; and they did just fine.

The small Olympic gas kiln is ready to fire those re-fires as soon as I have two clear days in a row, which are in the forecast later next week. John Britt came over yesterday morning and finished installing the last couple of plumbing parts and checked it out to made sure that all was working. This is one great guy, with a big, generous heart always ready to help this old lady in need. You are a treasure John!

The garden calls this morning, after our sourdough pancake breakfast. The potatoes I heeled up again yesterday need spraying. After that my sourdough no knead bread will be ready to bake, followed by some early dinner prep.

I may even be able to squeeze in some studio tidying time today. First thing I have to do is get Jim's help and get the Olympic kiln sections back on the frame. With the TRAC tour coming soon there's a lot to be done other than re-firing some pots later in the week. With all the rain in the forecast for early this week, it looks like there will be plenty of time for the studio before the garden calls again.

Cone 6 soda glaze tests

Yesterday was spent on getting all the test tiles from my latest cone 10 soda firing and the cone 6 soda firing done in John Britt's soda test kiln. I put all the photos, and recipes, etc. on my yahoo soda salt firing group. You have to be a member to access all the photos and files but membership is easy and free. It's not a chatty group so there are rarely any messages but there are a lot of glaze and slip recipes in the text folders and pictures of peoples kilns and work in the photo folder. Here's the URL for anyone interested:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sodasaltfiring/

Many of my tests are done one two or three different clay bodies. Most of these cone 6 tests are pretty dry because there should have been borax in the soda mix to help flux everything more. Both John and I forgot about that little details - OOPS; but I'm very encouraged by the results and plan to re-fire these either in John's kiln or when I get my 4cu ft Olympic gas kiln converted for soda firing. Will Baker is going to cut out some ports when he's free and then I'll spray the interior with ITC, do a little bisque firing and we'll be ready to go.

There's no breakfast with Wimbledon this morning, so after an early breakfast I'm heading for the garden to do some transplanting.