Today’s accomplishments

Comments

I managed to actually get a lot of stuff done today, and I’m feeling quite tired, but in a good way.

  • Assembled three of my acoustic panels for the studio (and then ran out of adhesive, oops)
  • Assembled my new fire pit ring (still need the brick surrounds and probably some gravel for the bottom)
  • Set up a photo shoot for album cover art (pending the completion of the acoustic panels and some general tidying up of the studio space)
  • Got caught up on a week’s worth of dirty dishes (oops)
  • Made some more tiny tweaks to the album track ordering, and got a couple folks signed up for the listening beta (but I could still use more!)
  • Glazed my two pots
  • Also somehow managed to get some piano practice in, too???

Read more…

Initial slipcast success!

Comments

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

IMG_6843.jpeg

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

Comments

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.

Read more…

Pottery class

Comments

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.

Read more…