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2-7-10   I started firing a trio of kilns last night. I was up way too late glazing the winged thingy and was having heart palpitations as my thoughts alternated between "Don't screw this up" and "It's just clay".

I was mesmerized by this view last night.	Doll (The poor baby has acne now).	e23s
	Fallonator

2-5-10    ARRRRRGH!!!!! I re-glazed and fired this ornament the other day (probably for the fourth time, ) after soaking it for about a week in a witches brew of organic goop (oil, sugar, etc). What a mistake!!!! Apparently it sprayed glaze particles all over the inside of the Doll on the way up which melted into the kiln lining. I was able to pick some of it out of the brick but had to flip the floor over. I will never do that again.

			I guess I forgot to photograph it!
Before	After	Before	After

2-1-10

These crystals were grown using this schedule, except for a longer sloping hold during segment 6 (5C/hr). I'm having a hard time figuring out exactly which segments are responsible for the center.

1-31-10

1-29-10      We put the finishing touches on a 50 cu. ft., 3000°F alumina fiber insulated, molybdenum disilicide heated furnace lining for firing tin - indium materials used in touch screen applications. This puppy has a composite roof system and finger jointed walls we cut on one of the CNC routers. I have to admit that the first time through these bits scared the hell out of me.

The truck will get loaded today so it can be on the customer's dock at 8:00 am Monday. It's always nice to turn a fine piece of work into an invoice! I reclaimed some deposited material from the flues of the old roof. My guess is that is a combo of crystallized tin - indium and molybdenum oxide. It has a very interesting look to it. Who knows what it will do to a crystalline glaze but I hope to find out soon.

1-27-10

1-25-10

1-23-10

1-22-10 I changed last night's firing schedule to try and get larger crystals with a wider white outline on the next one of Jamie's pieces. There are more blues as well as the number which gave gold crystals in these firings.

Maybe someday I can hope to throw like him but for now I'm just happy I've stepped in poop and have these beauties to play with.

1-21-10 This is the first piece thrown at the Symposium that I've fired. I still have quite a few other  pieces "in line" before this one but couldn't wait to see what these new glazes look like on one of The Wizards little cuties!

1-18-10 Good luck tomorrow Terry!

1-17-10 Terry hooked me up with Omega's TC Central software, remote receiver and transmitters. With them I can watch all my kilns firing at the same time.

		Kiln activity through the eyes of TC Central and Excel
Another gorgeous form by David Turner all dressed up for the prom!

In the first Fallonator PFR I was trying to get a very light reduction. I set the reduction controller to 820 and should have gotten about 10 minutes worth. Part way into it I realized the bottle was empty and made a quick change. It only saw a few minutes in reduction which did nothing to the pieces.

In the second PFR I raised the reduction setting to 845mv and temperature plus added a hold. The only problem was part way through it I realized I hadn't turned the reduction unit on, but was able to recover quickly.

1-15-10

Omega's temperature transmitter recently installed on the e23s.	EPK/Alumina/Biscuit Smack Down Results	More variation. The piece on the left is glazed with F413 base with 1% MnO2 + 3% Red CuOx + 1% CoCO3 over an inclusion stained slip.

Smack Down Results: Alumina Hydrate beat EPK hands down in my book. The cleanup is amazing. Pop the catcher and clean off the dust with a sponge. I could never figure out how someone would be happy using a bench grinder at the end to clean up the edges but now I see that all you need to do is bevel the edge where the glaze cracked and sponge off the bottom.
1-14-10

1-12-10

Comments I've received include: Wouuuuuuuuuuu ! Take a glass of the best whiskey you have, and enjoy the moment!!!!! You can be proud about these beauties!……….Hey Phil.  Nice. Keep on havin fun!……….They look awesome…………Wow! ………Looks like a good firing……..and…….Well my my my.........I'd say that your definitely all grown up now, and are in fact, one of the best.

I was really pretty happy with how these firings turned out. Lots of variation, lots to see, and things (results) seemed to make sense.  More Photos
		Fallonator
Doll	e23s

1-11-10     After ~ 20 hours all kilns were still cooling but cool enough to peek and see there will be some stuff to talk about.

1-10-10    

I loaded all three kilns with pieces from the days glazing efforts and am using the same firing schedule in each. I just received (today) transmitters for the Doll and e23s so the next time I do this I can plot the planned vs. actual firing curves for all 3 kilns. These pots have catchers glued with alumina hydrate. Let's hope for the best!
		Fallonator
Doll	e23s
	After striking to 780°C	Before
I've been torturing this poor pot with a series of firings and other bizarre and inhumane treatments. It looks like it took a blast from a well placed 12 ga. at 30 yards. Maybe it's time to throw in the towel on this bad boy. Hammer time????			Diane gave me some pointers on photographing this piece.

1-5-10     Left: Two pieces by Diane Luedemann.

1-4-10

Below: AW FUDGE!!!!! The only good in this disaster is that I found another reason to love L&L's hard element holders. This tip over resulted in a destroyed piece, a small chunk of missing brick and a little glaze on the face of a few holders. Can you imagine how much brick would have been destroyed (I figure ~ 1/2 sq. ft.) and all the fried elements to boot!

1-2-10

It looks like the pieces with glaze containing 5% Ag₂CO₃ fumed the others and impacted the ones with glaze containing 2% CuCO₃ + .5% CoCO₃ and no titania. They should have lit up copper red but instead seemed to have done otherwise. I think I should have checked William's "Silver Nitrate Manifesto" before reducing this load.

It seems like I got a decent reduction based on the color of the element supports and the pieces containing rutile (purple...and red).

1-1-10

It looks like the new year is starting with a BANG! New page! Newly tweaked look!

Setup for post fire reduction.

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	Recently I had the good fortune of importing many very interesting crystalline glazed pieces from Beijing, China.
	The source of all my good fortune---my day (and night, 24 - 7) job. ZIRCAR Ceramics, Inc.
	One of my other passions - landscaping, gardening, greens keeping, etc..