RAKU FIRING PARTY

Raku Firing Party

This is a special firing technique. First you heat up the pots in the kiln up to 1000 C, until they are red hot. Then you open the kiln door and taking especially long tongs, you take the pot out and quickly take it over to a tub full of saw dust. The saw dust burns, thus starving the glaze of oxygen, as well as cooling the glaze quickly making a lovely crackling affect in the glaze. Literally, the glaze is too small for the pot, so it cracks. Once it cools sufficiently you dip the pot in water and then take a scourer to scrub off the soot. We all smelled like campfire smoke after this little escapade, but it's all in good fun.

I decided to take a picture of some of the projects that I've been working on that haven't been fired yet. We will just hope that they survive firing. I am quite happy with the way my hand molds came out.

cheers,

Michele


Raku pots: Final products

Hand bowl, is something I made that hasn't been fired yet.

Raku firing, we are throwing saw dust over the raku pots to smother them.

Harold on the run...our pottery teacher's husband is the master of the tongs,
so he's taking a pot from the kiln and putting it into the tubs of saw dust.

Harold with tongs, you can see the open kiln.

Butterfly pitcher, is a project I did that is waiting to be fired.

Jeff and Michele Royce
c/o Flying Mission
P.O. Box 1022
Gaborone,
Botswana
Africa

http://www.flyingmission.org/
http://jeffandmichele.blogspot.com