Initial slipcast success!

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Today my first two slip-cast pots were unloaded from the kiln and I picked ‘em up. They came out great!

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My mold positives are 60mm across, and the bisqueware measures just under 54mm after firing, which tells me exactly what I need to know going forward. Basically anything I model needs to be 1.11x the intended final size. Easy enough to remember.

I’ll be glazing these, of course, although I’m not quite sure what to use them for. I’d only intended them for calibrating my shrink factor and they’re not really a useful size for anything. Maybe they’ll become the world’s worst cortado cups.

Slip casting update

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Notes to self:

  • 6 minutes of kick time seems like a lot until you suddenly have to patch your mold because you’ve noticed there’s leaks in it
  • Adding more water after it starts to kick does not slow it down, it just makes it fail entirely
  • 1mm is not enough thickness on your outer shell, either
  • Starting with a 100mm square pot was probably a bit ambitious
  • It’s probably easier to mix the plaster in multiple small batches instead of trying to make it all go at once

Oh well, it was a good learning experience, as long as I actually learned from it.

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Pottery class

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Today I had my pottery lesson at Rain City Clay, namely their “sip and spin” crash-course to wheel throwing.

A while ago I’d bought a cheap learner’s wheel and while I’d had some fun trying to self-teach on it, I couldn’t quite figure out a few basic things, particularly centering, which is, y'know, pretty important. And it turns out there’s a lot of other basic stuff that I didn’t learn by watching a lot of The Great Pottery Throw Down either! Like how to test the bottom thickness, among other things.

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