Lesley
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Can You Keep Your Pottery Outdoors? Protecting Your Pots
Pottery and sculpture can be a beautiful addition to an outside space. However outdoor conditions are not ideal for fired clay. Factors like heat, cold, rain, etc can affect your pottery resulting in wear and tear. So, should you avoid keeping your pottery outdoors or can they be protected from the effect of the weather?…
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13 Clay Wedging Surface Ideas – That Will Save You Money
A purpose-built wedging table is an additional expense you might want to avoid. If this is the case, then don’t stress. There are many inexpensive ways to find the perfect clay wedging surface for your studio. A wedging surface needs to have a bit of grip on it. If it’s a very smooth surface like…
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What Are Kiln Cookies? Protect Kiln Shelves with Patties
If you are starting to glaze your pottery, you may have heard about kiln cookies. What are kiln cookies and why are they important? Kiln cookies, sometimes called patties, are thin slabs of clay just a bit wider than the base of your pottery. You put them under your pots when you are glaze firing…
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Setting a Kiln to Hold for Hours Instead of Minutes by Mistake
So, you set your kiln to hold for hours instead of minutes by mistake. You are definitely not the first and you won’t be the last. Perhaps you set it to hold for 15 hours instead of 15 minutes. You are probably desperate to know what happens if you do set a kiln to hold…
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What is a Hold When Firing Pottery? – How to Soak Your Kiln
There are a number of technical terms used by potters when they talk about firing their pottery. One term you will come across when learning about using a kiln is a ‘hold’ or ‘hold time’. It took me a while to piece together why potters used a hold time. So, I thought it might be…
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What is Candling a Kiln and How is it Done? – Key Facts
One of the first things you learn about firing pottery is that it needs to be dry before it’s fired. You may have heard the quaint term ‘candling’ and wondered what it means. In this article, I look at what candling a kiln means and why is it so important. Candling a kiln involves heating…
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Can You Fire Bisque and Glazed Pots Together? Mixing Ware
Sometimes it can take a while to fill a pottery kiln, and no one likes to fire a half-empty kiln if they can avoid it. So, you might have wondered if you can fire bisque and glazed pots together in one load. Here are some things it’s helpful to know… Firing greenware and glazed pottery…
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What Temperature Can You Open a Kiln? – A Hot Topic
Most of us have been there, your kiln is coming to the end of the cool down, and you are itching to open it up. You may have heard about potters unloading their kilns early. Perhaps this has left you wondering what temperature can you open a kiln without causing clay carnage. This article looks…
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How Long Does It Take for a Kiln to Cool Down?
Once you’ve made your pottery and fired it you may be desperate to see how it has turned out. You probably want to know how long does it take for a kiln to cool down. This article is about how long you can expect to wait, and what factors affect the cooling time. The time…
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When do you Close the Peepholes on a Kiln? Essential Facts
Kilns come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. If you have a new kiln, you might be wondering how to use the peepholes. Or perhaps you are having trouble with your glazes and you suspect you can remedy this with the peepholes. Either way, you may have been wondering, when do you close the…
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Bisque Fired to Cone 6 by Accident? – Over Fired Bisque
If you have bisque fired to cone 6 by accident, you’re not the first, and you won’t be the last. It’s an easy mistake to make. But if you have a kiln load of overfired pottery, you may be wondering what you can do. Here are some suggestions about what you can do to salvage…
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What is the Right Temperature to Bisque Fire Pottery?
Before owning a kiln, I took my greenware along to a local pottery shop and would get it fired there. I told them what clay I had used, they fired it and I collected it when it was done. But firing ceramics yourself in your own kiln raises all sorts of questions. The first question…