Thursday, June 21, 2012

Adventures with a new kiln and porcelain clay, part 1

Last week I took the dive and purchased a larger kiln, one that will hold the bigger bisque pieces I've collected and will also fire much higher, to cone 8. I will still use my Paragon Home Artist Kiln for smaller lower firing jobs and my microwave kiln by Fuseworks. As it turned out I ended up needing an electrician to fix the receptacle for the dryer outlet for the new kiln: Biggest Little Kiln from Paragon. Once that was done, I headed out to Fort Worth and American Ceramics and Glass Supply to purchase some porcelain clay.
I've worked with porcelain before but someone else did the bisque firing. I'm finding out that firing porcelain to bisque in my new kiln isn't going to be as simple as firing earthenware greenware to bisque. Apparently porcelain clay or slip will fuse to other pieces during the bisque firing, unlike earthenware. As a chemist this make sense due to the much higher firing temps but it didn't occur to me until I started researching firing porcelain to bisque. This article from Ceramics Arts Daily on Porcelain Clay was a great start. 

So I'm going to go in baby steps and learn the "soul" of porcelain clay. First step is easy, putting kiln wash on the new shelves, drying them, and firing the shelves and posts to cone 01 for the first ever new kiln firing. While that is going on, I will work on creating a swirled open-weave vase using a balloon as a form to fit the vase pieces around. I will post in-progress photos as I go. My main goal is to become familar with firing porcelain to bisque so that I can throw it on my wheel etc. I don't like throwing earthenware clay on a wheel because it has a lot of grog in it and is very rough compared to the porcelain clay which is like playing with butter. Stay tuned!