Multi kiln unloading cone 6 electric 02/28/26

Well I get a question every so often that says how long does it take to make that mug and I often think well there's a lot involved here but do you really have to include everything like sweeping the floor of the studio or just even getting to the studio on snow days when it can take you four hours of back-breaking work just to get to the door to open up the studio. Good morning it's Vaughn here at westcotebellpottery.ca in Nova Scotia Canada on February 27th and we have a mountain of snow outside so I'm huddled at two kilns cooling down another one over there that's cool as well so I'm going to unpack these two and then show you the one at the end there as well but I won't do every piece because at this point we've been doing this for so many years there's a lot of duplication but there are a lot of new pieces in these three kilns that a lot of teapots and big big jars and sauce bottle boats and a lot of other stuff so I thought I'd show you what's relevant so welcome if you haven't seen my channel before just welcome and see what's going on let me know if you like it let's open the one closest to you at the first okay so these have been shown before this is now a regular thing that I have to make for every summer season it has a very similar feel to the area we live in with lots of little coves and quite hilly here in Nova Scotia not mountains but just hilly and so I designed this as a cove series I call it they're actually done with multiple glazes pouring I have done the video I also do one that's for winter so it's very kind of snowy around here and you know so this one I call you used to call it the Icelandic series and I still do that because I designed it because of Peter Barr's photography who goes to Iceland to take photographs so I'm using colors that I kind of inspired from those photographs now I have to think about display in the gallery you can't just have lots of mugs up for sale which is really what sells anyway but but I did brown isn't a very popular color for selling I love it but but this one is tenmiku gold on the top and then randy's red on the bottom which turned out pretty nice in this I like that it's sort of a breaking to a darker brown and everything on the bottom there um yeah that actually was a nice combination and then variegated blue and oatmeal on the top to get the textural glazes and I did do a lot of carving into the upper part of that but the glaze is because I've got three on top of each other there even though it's a nice look with the texture you lose the effect because the glaze is so thick but that's a nice job these are just meant as vases and then we have another one with the handles and these are using the handle tools I got from artisan pottery tools dot com from Bill Wright who makes those you can see it's a nice handle sometimes you can put really small lugs on just tiny things that you could maybe tie a piece of rope around but I like to have a real handle even though it's purely decorative so we've got chun green and then variegated blue and oatmeal on the top and the chun was dipped fairly lightly on the bottom fairly thick up the top and then the variegated blue oatmeal just on that top edge there with a bit of oatmeal on the bottom I could take some pictures of these and put them at the end of the video also has some serious runs there is no strontium crystal magic in any of these this is just the running you get from variegated blue and oatmeal and I increase the length of my soak just by four minutes from 11 to 15 minutes on the soak at 22 27 I put these at but bright blue with variegated blue and oatmeal over the top my bright blue of course is a little less bright because of how I modified it recently but I will go back to the regular bright blue after this is all used up sometime this year because it's not quite as nice let's have a look at one of these this one is all chun green dipped fairly thickly and I did some sprigging on these as well so that kind of worked out nicely and on the bottom I have my that new green I think it would have been the slop green glaze my junk glaze but the handles turned out nice again and the little one yeah what did I put on here I'm not sure what that area is it's probably folk art white is my guess but it could be just the junk glaze but that's usually greener than that but it's got bright blue on the bottom variegated blue not on top but I am not sure what that is yeah is it it just looks too pale for put fake ash and slop green but anyway mystery one every so often you do something and you just can't figure out what you've done but it's a nice little pop yeah we got three without handles that's very nice so we've got my apple green and then it looks like randy's red dipped like that all the way down to touch the apple green and then where the green and the randy's red overlap we're getting a sort of bluish tint I am totally not sure where that came from that's just the two glazes together doing that because there's no cobalt in either of those glazes so that's what we call de-vitrification and where the crystals give off a bluish tint and then got variegated blue and oatmeal over the top area looks like that's a serious blue with no cobalt and we did randy's red again up from the bottom and then tenmeku gold dipped from the top and where they overlap you get this color where this is the randy's red on the bottom area and it did run down a little bit and touch the kiln shell so I will have to sand that a little bit but it's not it's not like the runs are damaging anything then variegated blue and oatmeal over the top there's some really nice reddish browns there nice I like doing that and the last one just all blue and this is all using that speckle clay and it really goes sort of a sheen like a shine which is why possibly it's almost fluxing a little bit that's interesting yeah I don't know maybe I did wipe the it was oatmeal on the bottom and I did wipe it off the bottom but it must leave in the speckles because it's a grog clay leave little bits of glaze inside the crevices of these little pit holes and so you get a little fluxing of the clay but it's bright blue with variegated blue and oatmeal there okay so I've got a couple of yellows here this is the old bright yellow and that's the new yellow that I kind of softened it down a little bit to make sort of a more a warmer yellow and all that and then I've got my apple green over the top which gives it a really nice spring salad fruit salad kind of look I think that would be very happy looking bowl and then another one the same so the recipes are all I could post them again in this video I guess I keep posting them many times there you go bright yellow again this is it's looking really good in that one actually I don't know why I was unhappy with it purple and yellow always look good together should try that maybe I did that's the purple and then a bunch of little balls I just did a whole slew of little balls because I noticed I was short of little balls so they're all randomly glazed there's usually four whenever I do a glaze combo I usually do four of them got some interesting chattering in that chattering again in this one that's variegated blue over chun green and some oatmeal on it and another purple that was variegated blue oatmeal too chattering shows through a little bit the purple too that's the apple green oh yeah that's nice I'll put some little bowls oh we got some I did a bit longer soak on this one we got a little grinding I'll have to do there variegated blue over blue green copper red now I increased the soap up to 15 minutes from 11 minutes and it gave the variegated blue just enough time to do a bit of running I guess but that's a nice little combo too oh we just saw that one and that's uh that's the new yellow that's a combo of the bright yellow and the other ochre yellow that I had so I do like it a lot you've got the stilts aren't too bad either I'll have to sand them a little bit so it's some glazes you have to sand or grind because the stilt mops are so deep there's the new yellow too that's a very pretty way that ran down there I don't know if the customers appreciate some of the fine finer elements of glazes and how controlling the runs so it doesn't destroy the piece by sticking to the is pretty tricky that's John Green variegated blue that's very pretty I'm not sure what I meant that to be and another variegated blue and ran down again so two of these will have to be ground down the top the next layer down I did a few of my Icelandic type coloring same on the outside too sometimes I get crawling because I'm doing multiple glazing but this one was perfect so it's supposed to be the ocean with the mountains it's supposed to be some larger versions of the other ones so this is meant as a little grouping towards shattering showed up really nicely on that and two more of these this one is the apple green with the new yellow over the top you can see a little bit of a yellow glow in that another one of the little tiny ones I did I just had a little bit of clay left over and I threw about four of these and blue green copper red that's a very pretty ball and the chattering did really well on that one and I did another one of it too well the runs were very successful on that one maybe too successful it's another wall that's pretty not sure what the difference is there because that's apple green but it came out much nicer the way I really like it it doesn't always do that so I'm not sure it's got bright yellow on the top it's probably the clay body yeah 455 speckle versus the white clay oh look at the outside there too so just two that I have to and these are both blue green copper red with very giddy blue over the top so I have a nice grouping of balls in the second kiln here I've got some more different pieces as well not as many plates in this one I made a bunch of platters with little lug handles on the side as well so trays really well kind of platter or tray I don't know but it just means that you can grip it a bit easier on the edge there and this is in the Icelandic colors again and I sometimes do it like this where you oatmeal on both sides so it looks more like a river or a little estuary kind of thing yeah I did some more shake it up glaze kind of combos when I was using a mixture of like greens with some blue and leaving the natural clay in the middle which once again this is that stoneware clay and you can see a little sheen in the actual white clay itself that doesn't even have any glaze on it in the center there that's unglazed so definitely that that clay body is fluxing quite well at cone six that's a nice mug and then this is a summery one oh I like this one with my new yellow there so you know it's basically my chun green my apple green and sometimes I might even have the slop green in here and with the yellow and the blue this one had the I think it's the matte turquoise over the yellow as well in that one yeah you can see a little bit of the matte turquoise that worked out pretty good because it gave me that softer green which is a sort of lustrous matte you can do so many experiments when you're doing this type of multiple glazing of course the variegated blue loves to run so you've got to watch that one matte turquoise again variegated blue chun green and the yellow maybe I don't think it's the yellow I think it's just the matte turquoise and then over the top here I put something else which I don't know yeah I just don't know which green that is because it both look like matte turquoise but I'm not sure here we're obviously sure because we've got bright blue with some variegated blue over the top there as well which is beautiful beautiful beautiful look at that texture with the variegated blue over the bright blue maybe I don't need to keep putting the oatmeal there because that's nice in itself and then you've got the apple green over the yellow on the bottom this was just a little spare bowl I had sitting around chun green variegated blue and oatmeal a couple more of them oh that's pretty it ran a little bit but it's smooth but look at that that must be the oatmeal over the bright blue and then you've got the chun green and apple green over the top part there and the chun green goes over to that matte turquoise but it goes to yellow I think that's the matte turquoise and then we've got the blue over the top so there's like five glazes on that piece and the same again here oatmeal always on the inside you make like a nice neutral glaze on the inside and then I have a few trays here because people are asking for these little coasters that I make which I sometimes turn into spoon rests and I think these are nice when you've got platters in a kiln you can put them around the platter that's matte turquoise with variegated blue and oatmeal on the top and then we have some a little jar in here and that's how I fire the lids just on a little stilt so we're looking for a jar that has a lid okay it looks like there's the jar that needed a lid it was a little urn every so often somebody comes in here looking for a little urn to put pets ashes in so let's always make a few of these to have around and then we have some more of the fence lugs which have turned out really nice there's such a nice surface to that it's got a sheen rather than a shine that's probably related to the stepple clay I bought half a ton of that from another potter because they weren't going to use it and it was really a good buy because I love using it these are repeats I'll just show you them but the colors are really good these are very spring like colors and then I've got from the another video I may have put it in this a whole bunch of assorted bowls because I was noticing I was running out of bowls so there's a whole lot of these which I will probably display as little groupings but look how beautiful that green is all those greens are really nice there and I think that's the speckle clay doing a lot of this stuff bright blue with variegated blue and opium you always get that little orangey brown line there where they run down yeah it'll be a nice display I always think of display whenever I'm making work how it will look on the display and I try and make groupings as I was saying bowls there's a whole bunch more bowls folk art white with apple green and a little blue in the center there I actually sponged that blue and I sort of did a swirl and then sponged it which is why you've got a sort of fuzzy effect and then more with the little lugs these are in the speckle white clay which means that they're probably oven proof it's a grog 516 speckle clay that one's on there quite well chun green variegated blue and oatmeal same with the last one and then my purple too I raise the firing temperature to 22 29 from 22 25 just and it made a big difference there's not enough runs to make me worry and yet I've got a slightly more better flux in the glaze because it should go to 22 35 but I used to get too many runs and lose pieces of that a couple more of these you just saw in the last little batch that came out multiple glazing and I made four of these and this must be the last one of these chun green with variegated blue and oatmeal they're just nice little drinking glasses okay here's a ten miku gold on a slow cool I was just talking to somebody about this um and this is how yellow and matte it will go if you do a slow cool and there it is on the outside with many many more yellow flecks in it so if you want to get rid of the slow cool too much too much madness to it you have to do a wrap more rapid cool but I cooled this at a very slow rate I think like 79 degrees an hour down it has 10 miku gold with variegated blue and oatmeal on that piece I like it when it's got some flex but not overlap that's very matte for me and this is chun green and variegated blue and oatmeal apple green with yellow over the top chattering looks really good on there and that's over that speckled white clay which is why the apple green is doing all those sort of crystally speckles I will definitely order the speckled clay again the grogged clay I still have about eight boxes left so I've got more pieces I can make with it and the last one you just saw these chun green oatmeal matte turquoise uh I'm not sure I think variegated blue is over the bottom there and that's it for that kiln so that was it for that um I've got loads more to put in the kiln so we'll actually do that for a later kiln unloading um I'm experimenting with a lot of stuff at the moment still there's still about 10 weeks before the season starts to get going again isn't that a long time so it goes by fast but you can make a lot of work in 10 weeks so um but uh but this has been a good production productive winter with so much snow no distractions except for all those days where we're shoveling so we're up to 10 snow storms for the winter now it's a bad one so the last bad one was 2015 where we got 17 storms in 13 weeks and we've still got March to get through so uh so we could catch up all right thanks for watching all right take care