Hey baby, I’m your Homo Habilis…

Well, usually at least. This last couple of days was an exception. I started dabbling in some nifty new technology (to me). This involved casting some new tools, so when the old ones wear out I’ll have some ready to go. This tool is called a Gyubera, or cow’s tongue rib, that is sort of indispensable when making a lot of Karatsu forms.

The problem with them is that it is awfully hard to find them in the right shape for what you need. There are a lot of cheap ones on the market which are, well, cheap. The one thing they have going for them is that they have a lot of extra wood on them so you can do a lot of fine tuning with a rasp and sandpaper. The good ones are good, but cost a small fortune. I paid about $80 for my large one that I use for teabowls. Smaller one was about $50. Am I the only one that thinks that is ridiculous? Well, they were handmade one by one, by a barber. As strange as that sounds, there was this one barber that made really nice gyubera. He is now retired, and though someone took over his business, the new guy needs practice.

However, the big problem with all the aforementioned gyubera is that they are made of wood and prone to cracking and rot. It’s kind of a ‘heads I win, tails you lose’ situation. If you keep them damp, they rot. If you let them dry out, get wet, dry, wet, repeatedly, they crack. I found a partial solution to this by soaking them in Minwax wood hardener, and applying a layer of epoxy. But the epoxy bubbles up with time and they wood hardener wasn’t enough to prevent cracking over the long run, although it did extend the life of the tool considerably.

Not wanting to have to buy more, because of the cost and the fact that the new guy still needs practice. I thought I’d just make some myself, but it didn’t solve the wood material problems. So, these last couple of days I spent making plaster molds of the original gyubera, and using dental grade acrylic resin to cast new ones. I got the resin from a friend who used to be in the business. It is a funny pink color because it is supposed to look like gums. Aesthetically speaking, not my favorite for clay tools, but on the bright side it is unlikely I’ll ever get my tools confused with someone else’s tools.

After a couple of tries, I got a pretty good working two piece mold of two gyubera side by side. Got it ready for the resin pour and got the resin poured without too much fuss. Once it was poured and set for about 20 minutes, it was ready to heat cure in a 50C hot water bath for 25 minutes. Strangely, all of this went fairly smoothly. The problem came with trying to get that mold apart later. I tried and tried but it was not happening, and I ended up breaking the mold. Still, the casts were covered in plaster, because the liquid of the resin had penetrated through the release agent into the plaster. Oops, guess I should have used the special acrylic resin release agent instead of the casting slip release agent. Live and learn.

The cleaned up casts will make usable tools, but they are pocked with bubbles and other spaces where the resin didn’t flow properly. I’ll have to try again, improve the craftsmanship.

The First Pots: Chawan and Guinomi

Here are some of the first pots to get cleaned up after the firing last week. I’ll post more over the next few days as I get things cleaned up.

Overall the firing went well, much better than the first two certainly. I’m finally starting to get a grip on how the kiln climbs, and learning not to worry about it too much. We fired both chambers this time and it took roughly 30 hours. Cone 10 flat in front, cone 9 touching in the rear, and cone 13 almost touching in the second chamber. The second chamber is a pleasure to fire, very relaxing after stoking the front. I think I can still get more aggressive with the front, taking the temp up even more, probably somewhere around cone 12 would be good for the rice straw ash glazes.

The intention was to drop cone 6 in the rear and call it quits, but it ended up getting hotter than expected, and the ware in front ended up a little too shiny. However, the middle and rear of the setting came out just about perfectly. Temp from top to bottom was quite even. We stopped stoking the second chamber when cone 11 dropped and clammed everything up after letting some of the excess heat out. Still, when I peeked in the next morning, that second chamber was still glowing, and cone 13 was mostly down. Guess that 1250kg of insulating castable does its job well.

Most of the failures this time around were caused by bad glazing, not the firing. Rice straw ash glazes were universally too thick, and an ash glaze I whipped up hoping to be a nice runny green ended up being a crusty reddish brown. Oops.

Patience Is A Virtue

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which I do not seem to have. Here is a picture of a small dish I pulled from the rear of the kiln this afternoon. Kiln is still at around 300C, so I will wait a few more days for it to cool off. Last time I waited until it was cool enough for the pots to come out, but still hot enough to cook me in the process. Not making that mistake twice. . .

mike martino, in taku

First Chamber Loaded

Finally! After seemingly endless days of loading, the front is finished. The large pieces in front are most refires with the exception of the large jar to the right. The big white piece in the middle isn’t a pot, it is a large piece of  Shirakawa Toseki (porcelain stone from the Shirakawa area near Arita dam). The square right behind it is a piece of sandstone that I cut in two and hollowed out to make a box.

Gallery

The Kiln

On and off I’ve had requests for pictures of the kiln, so here are some selected photos of  it from beginning to completion. Building this kiln was the subject of the first Workshop In Taku, in 2010. The second in the series, Workshop in Taku 2012: The Simple Teabowl, will happen from May 12 – 18, 2012. Full details here:

http://karatsupots.com/workshop2012/2012home.html

 

The series starts not with ‘the kiln’, but  ‘the hole’.

Kiln design and expert workshop guidance by Craig Edwards of Minnesota.