Kiln unloading 02:2026

Okay, this is a Cone 4, and I'll post the clear glaze recipe in Beemix Clay. What temperature is it? 125, we should be able to work that in. Fahrenheit, that is. And I use black slip with a thick mix of Robin Hopper's slip recipe for Cone 4, slip with 50% underglaze mixed with it, so it makes it a less expensive black coating than just pure underglaze. And it's a little thicker than underglaze, so you get a little bit of texture with it, which I've always liked rather than just underglaze, which really wouldn't give you much texture at all. So I was making, I think, about 21 of these, and I was running out of time, so I did a few of these, which I occasionally do whenever I'm running out of time, which are just striped mugs using a regular fluting tool, just a little lube tool, basically, that came with a set that I have. But as you can see, my clear black glaze is absolutely crystal clear. I don't think I've ever seen a clear glaze as nice as this one. There you go. It's been modified a few times. It was Tom Finney's glaze recipe originally, and then I took it on and modified it, and I took another glaze recipe that Ashworks used to use in New York, and that was Phil Harris and Anne Scheisel Harris, who used to run that pottery, and they had a glaze recipe, and I tried that, it was too cloudy, and I mixed it with my Tom Finney recipe, 50-50 each, and it came out crystal clear. How about that? Anyway, these are just carvings, doing sgraffito. I usually show these on little pedestals, but since I'm rotating them in my hands, I guess there might not be any need for that. I like doing them anyway. I keep meaning to make some roller stamps with birds, and maybe I'll get to do it. It's been a busy day today. I watched a house for one of my neighbors, and its furnace broke down, so I've been disrupted today taking care of that. I had a request for some whale coffee mugs, so I made a bunch. There are listed four with schooners on them as well. But they're not in this firing. I usually get about 25-27 mugs in a firing this skill, so I'll have to make a bunch more carved pieces. My hands and my neck are actually still hurting at the moment, because I've been carving so many flat tiles, I think I'm hurting my neck, because my neck has been low down, leaning over a table for so many hours a day. Anyway, that's that level. Okay, next layer down. Is that in focus? I think so. It almost doesn't look in focus, anyway. There we go, another crow, a big crow mug this time. I will put them on the little turntable at the end of the video. It's snowing again out there. We have what we call an Alberta clipper going over us at the moment, which means not very much snow, and it moves over pretty fast. When you're carving these, you have to make sure that the slip is at the point where it's not dusty, but it's not soft. So when you carve a little bit out, it falls off the piece, rather than sticking on the piece. And if you let it get past that, it gets dusty, and that's when you shouldn't be doing it, without the filtering thing next to you, because it'll cause dust and you'll be breathing it in. So it's very... you've got to try and carve them. I try to carve these in around an hour, maybe an hour and a quarter. It stops them, because your hands are drying them out, being so warm as well. It's not very many pieces a day when you do these, though. In the summer it's nice to do them, because you're helping customers and doing this in between. I used to do them at craft fairs. I would take maybe a dozen with me to carve at a show, sitting in my booth. I haven't been to a craft fair in a long time now, and I'm quite happy about that. I used to put on so much mileage on my truck. I used to do about 27 craft fairs a year, so it's one every other weekend. I used to bunch them together four to six at a time, though, so I'd be up a few weeks off. I used to put so much mileage on my truck, I went through three cargo vans, and I was doing craft fairs for probably about 27 years as well. I wore out three cargo vans driving around the United States. My latest truck, that I've had now for 11 years, has just hit about 18,000 miles, because I work at home now. I don't do shows. I only do it because I do a lot of gardening, and I need a big pickup truck to get stuff for the garden. But it has a plough on it, too, so I need it in the winter, especially around this time of year. Okay, my bottom level has a lot of my stencil chrome on it, too. This is one that I tried to reverse, leaving the whale white. And leaving the ocean dark. I don't know. I've done one before, and it sold straight away, so I thought I'd try another one. This is the way I normally do it. See, I like the water effect there, so I prefer doing them this way. But that other way seems to be quite dramatic, doesn't it? Another crow hug. Oh, this stilt looks like it fell, collapsed a bit. See how it slipped off a little bit? It came off so easy. Stilts leave a tiny little sharp piece, so I have to sand that little area there. It's not so sharp, but it does leave a little rough spot. And it leaned into the elements, and so it dried the glaze out a little bit in that moist spot there. And all the others, I won't show you all of them, because they're all the same. I have my stencil version of the crow mug, which means I can make one for half the price of the other mugs. I'm going to do these differently with flying, as well as standing crows. Okay. Well, let's see what else we have in the other camos. Okay, this is another one of my tile kiln unloadings. So these are all Sgraffito done on red clay, which is cone 04 to cone 04. And the slip is the one out of Ceramic Spectrum by Robin Hopper, which I'll post in a video. And basically, then I stain it black. So I've got white slip and black slip on here over the top of red clay. And sometimes there'll be a little bit of yellow in them, too, which is also the same slip with some yellow stain in it. So these are just tiny little Sgraffito carved pieces. And I just posted a video recently with some of these, because in the winter, I spend a lot of time carving tiles in the evenings in this new studio. And then framing them up for the season. And the big murals, I actually sold ten of those last year. And those ones are like five, six feet long, multiple tiles in a mural. The shelves I'm using are the Advancer Kiln shelves, except I get them from Pottery Supply House in Toronto. And they're actually less expensive than the ones I originally bought. So imagine these are all going to be in long ceramic frames, too. I can show you some pictures of them here, too. And this is what the rest of the kiln unloading will be, these large 12-inch carved tiles. And you can see they are totally flat, because of how I fire them in the bisque firing with weights all around the edges, too. So this is part of a vertical mural. In fact, the one above, I think, fits. The one I took out previously is the one that fits above this one here. You can see the whole thing now, if I try to move my arm out of the way. I'll put photographs of them in the video before they were glazed, so the photos show up really well. That's another one. So this would be a horizontal piece. So I'm not sure. I think this was the furthest on the right in the mural it would belong to. And this one I painted the lobster boat with a little yellow underglaze, too. I guess you can see it a little better. I'll give you a close-up here, as well. I try to hold it still so it stays in focus. This one is part of a vertical. And this one, I think this is part of a vertical, too. And there's a lot of underglaze painting in that one, as well. Let's get a close-up again. This was part of the three-church mural, which I showed in the last video, too. This is also part of that three-churches mural. There are three churches in Mahone Bay, all next to each other, which is a local town. OK. Last one in the firing. And this, I think, is part of a horizontal piece. There you go. I wasn't going to show unloading this little kiln, but I noticed when I lift the shelf up that there's some nice pieces underneath. And I also figured out, finally, that this was that green that I changed. My fake ash green mixed up with my slop green glaze when I mixed the two together. This is the result. I mean, isn't that pretty? And it's just a couple of glazes that weren't very useful at all, but now they're totally useful. And I like that green. It's sort of what I would call a sage green, rather than an apple green. But it's a really pretty transparent, so it'll be great for chattering and things like that. So I've got a couple of those. These are just dishes to go underneath the colanders. This is actually the cobalt white there, looking very nice, over the speckled or the grogged white 519 from Pottery Supply House. Looking very nice. This is a lid for something underneath. That's a yellow, and I think there's a canister here. Let me see if I can get it. Yep. So this is the new yellow with strontium crystal magic dip, halfway down, with the new yellow dipped over it, and then a little bit of apple green on the top and the bottom, to make a very pleasing little canister. So I just carved tiles for two days in the new studio. Because we had no power, I was able to do that right in front of the windows. This is a really nice vase. Bright yellow, my new yellow, with strontium crystal magic. Not looking as matte as the other piece, but showing signs at the top there with some apple green, and then the green on the bottom as well. So I can see some bright sunflowers sticking out of that one. Very Van Gogh. Quite a few vases in here. I'm basically trying to see whether I can build up this body of work, which I'm doing a video on too, where you can actually do a display where you've really coloured and categorised all your pieces in different forms, all in the same glaze, to make a really coherent display. So these are all part of that, to build up the vocabulary of the forms. And this is the slot green, kind of fake ash slot green mix over the top of the red clay, so it comes out a much more olive colour with that. So really pretty, but it shows the transparent quality of the glaze, and that's where you've got the strontium crystal magic. And I'm not sure, I think I did very giddy blue on the top of this one. And there should be a lid for this, but it must be hidden in the other. Isn't that nice. There's a lid for this somewhere, but my guess is it might be in the kiln that's cooling down, which I'll show you in the next part of this video. Oh, that's pretty too. Blue-green, copper-red, with the strontium crystal magic. But the chattering in that one turned out very nice. All those tools, keep mentioning it, it's partisanpotterytools.com OK, these pieces are actually the blue-green, copper-red, and I've got the strontium crystal magic in the upper half over the chattering area. So the blue-green, copper-red over the top of that strontium crystal magic does a really nice kind of opaque feeling to the top of the blue-green, copper-red, and then underneath it's still a little transparent. So it's kind of a nice effect. I'm not sure if it'll be popular or not. Now I was inspired, I mentioned this, and I would encourage you to take a look. There's a beautiful video on Richard Batterham. He was a UK ceramicist and died in 2021. He was really just a bleached tradition type potter, wanted to make affordable pots, just regular tableware, functional pots. For the public, which I really like because I've always tried to keep my prices really down so that I can actually let anybody who wants one buy a piece. So that's another kind of stuff. Inspired by Richard Batterham. And that's the lid to that piece. These are really nice simple lids to make for jars. But you can see the chattering really shows up well in that glaze too. It's breaking. And there's just a little couple of trays down there for some colanders. So I'll show you the next kiln now. OK, this is the other kiln with all the canisters and all these lids in. So what I'll do is I'll show you the lids. The stilt collapsed. I always hate that. This means you'll get a little sharp edge just there that you have to grind away. It actually slid off the stilt because the stilt is still good. That one off. We've been shoving snow all morning. It's 10 o'clock. We usually get started before this, but we're in the midst of winter now. It's been a mild winter up to now, and then all of a sudden we've got a whole pile of snow snowed one after another. But it keeps you fit. That's a pretty lid. Let's see. Let's get this out without touching the lids. Ooh, there's some nice ones in there. It's exciting. Even the purple came out really nice on this. And this is where I was rubbing the actual glaze off to let the clay show through because we've got this deep stoneware red. So I thought it would show nice, especially in the opening. But this is purple and it looks really good too. And I'm still using Staunton Crystal Magic on the pieces. There's a nice canister. Oh, yes. Let's see. Can you see the lid? Yes, it is. I've thought about airbrushing my glazes because I get these lines that separate the areas and I've always thought, well, wouldn't it be nice if they faded a lot? But airbrushing, I'm always environmentally conscious that when you airbrush glaze, most of it goes outside. And I have five filters in my spray booth and I actually manage to catch, I would say, 90-95% of the actual slips. I only spray slips, basically. But still, maybe 5% will get out there. But I always feel like if I start doing the glaze as well, it's going to just increase that bit that gets outside, so I don't spray. But it would be nice to try. Oh, wow. Remember this one. That's very nice. So what do we have here? Folk Art White, Apple Green, and even I think the Slop Green's on there too. So probably Folk Art White on the bottom part, Slop Green glaze dipped down like that, and then I think I did a little Apple Green on the rim too. Look at that piece. Really nice. It's got nice sort of clay showing through and everything. Really nice. That'd be nice in a big vase. Yeah, well, Jackie just fell when we were doing the, uh, that one. I think that's the lid. I've got so many lids and jars here, we might have some mixed up. But really pretty. Yeah, it's very icy. The snow, it's raining on top of it now, so we try to get it off before it freezes tonight. Because then we have big problems. Folk Art White again with Apple Green. I think that I've resolved this whole issue with the Strontium Crystal Magic, but I really don't know how the customers are going to be responding. Because will they like these colours? I don't know. But anyway, that's the toilet roll holder, which can sit on a little shelf next to the bathroom, next to the toilet, and you can pull the thing out, and some of my cat will not be able to get the toilet paper anymore. Until she figures out, if she keeps pulling with a claw between two sheets, she can get the blood out. I'm sure she'll beat me. How can I think without defeating the cat's brain? Oh, look at the chattering there. Really pretty. I love those tools. Another vase. Oh, that one covered up the chattering and the carving too much. It still came out with nice colours. Has the resemblance of the Chinese bronzes. Another one needs a lid. So far we've got them, they all fit, but maybe I'll still have the mixed up lids, I don't know. Removing the glaze, just with a little metal scraper from the highlights. This must be this one. Oh, everything fits. Got two more to go, but I think... We're moving the glaze with the scraper again. Two more to go? Oh, I've got several lids here, so who knows. That one fits too. This is slop green, which is my new green from fake ash, fake ash plus my slop glaze. So I don't waste any glaze, we just put it into the bucket, and then see what colour it comes out after it doesn't fail. So I've got a little bit of crawling there. I'll have to re-glaze this one anyway. That's probably because of the... Oh yeah, I've got some crawling. Two of the glazes didn't like each other too much. And it was the green, yes. So I'll have to... That makes sense, because it was the fake ash that was crackling and sort of flaking when you put it on a pot. And so, I'll just have to re-dip this one, and put it back in the fire. But it came out in a really pretty colour. In fact, the colour of the clay underneath is really pretty as well. But we'll actually be hiding that when there's the lid there. See, it does. One more vase. And this has a little crawling on the lip too. Actually, that doesn't bother me too much. It almost looks like it's on purpose. Apple green and looks like the slop green here. Experiment. It doesn't matter. Look at the crawling on that. See, it looks almost like a painting, where you've got another colour showing through. But it worked, so we'll see whether a paper towel roll fits in here. And we'll end up with that piece that Margaret from... Maureen, rather, from Mexico sent me a request to do something like this. Whoa. No crawling, at least. And a really pretty piece. OK, the lid that fits. Not sure which one it would be. There's two lids to go. That one fits. And that could fit on the other one too. Very nice. Yep, and that fits too. Folk art white, apple green, and strontium crystal magic underneath. Ah, the glaze ran off on the top area there as well. And down there. This will be the last lid, and it's got crawling again. Ah, I must have the wrong lid on something, because that one doesn't fit. What else do we have to try? Well, I don't think it's warped. It could be that one. I could have the wrong lid on something, but I'll have to figure that out. You know, often it can simply say, oh, look at the crawling. Lots of re-firing here then. I wonder if it's because I was scraping, and it encouraged crawling. Guesswork, I guess. See, two more left with lids and two vases, and that one looks nice. This one must have a lid somewhere, unless it's just a vase. I think this was just a vase. You can see I was scraping the glaze off there. This one has a lid. And the pot has warped. You can see it warped a little bit. Yep, that's not going to fit. So we have a utensil jar instead of a canister, so at least you can save them. If there's a problem like that. But the yellow is really pretty. Let's see how it warped. Should have fired it with the lid on, but then you have to have no glaze on the rim or the bottom of the lid, and I prefer to have glaze. I wonder why that one... It's actually... I'm wondering if that's the 519 speckle with the grit. Or it could be my speckle plate, or it could be recycled. And the last one here. Is this the lid for this one then? Nope, that's not it either. So I must have another lid. Anyway, we've got utensil jars or canisters, right, that you can back up. This is blue, green, copper, red. Oh, and that lid is not blue, green, copper, red, so it must mean we have another lid somewhere. Ba ba da ba baa, baa Ba ba da ba baa Ba da da da ba da bad da Ba da da ba baa