Pots and more pots
From here you can just see the edge of fall coming around corner. Of course it’s a fantastic time to be in the mountains, but this year has been a busy one for us. Joy and I have been putting in the long hours as usual, getting ready for the second firing of the Fall. […]
Getting Up to Speed
Oh how the weeks have flown by…so many events have taken place in the last few weeks it’s hard to know where to start? Let’s see, well.. making pots for the last two months mixed with another kiln building trip, and of course there was the wedding. What else can you say? It was a […]
Finishing up the Penland Salt Kiln
Finished up the kiln building class a bit ago, and forgot to share these photos. In about 10 days we had the new salt kiln built and ready to go. The two students in the class were able to make as much work as they could squeeze out at night, and they still managed to keep up with us […]
Brick by Brick
It has been one never ending pile of bricks for me over the last few weeks. As mentioned in the last post, I was hired to build a new soda kiln for the good folks at the Odyssey Center. This particular kiln is a cross draft soda kiln, about 15 cubic feet of stacking space, […]
Another Mickey Kiln
Back from a week long excursion with Captain Conepack to build another Shane Mickey kiln. I’ve worked with Shane for the past few years, helping him build kilns in I think three states now. I’ve learned a lot from him about design theory and the practicalities of building kilns, and we tend to ramble on […]
Here and There
The summer is flying by while I run here and there on all the various projects. Most of them are moving along slowly, but at least they’re moving. One of the websites is nearly complete, the plans for the reduction kiln are almost Final Plans, we finished up the building of the little “test” soda […]
A New Soda Kiln
Back from the two-week stay at Penland, a little tired but mostly unharmed. Another Shane Mickey kiln now resides in Mitchell County, built with the help of several students. I was there to assist Shane and in the two weeks we built a modest sized soda kiln and fired it twice with the work made […]
Fresh Pots
The next few days after a firing are always an interesting period of reflection…it seemed to have gone well but one never wants to let expectations soar too high. It seemed Firing #11 went well, 23 hours is about right and most of the cones were down where I wanted them down. Unloading proved that […]
Kiln Log #8
You may have noticed an obscure reference to the recent firing here on Roan Mountain. It was firing number 8 and sadly not as successful as the last two. After making some adjustments to the bagwall and firing approach I had two very good firings in a row. Almost all of the really cold areas […]
