(no subject)
Busy holiday weekend.
I had turkey at the Horse People and then turkey at my mom's on Thursday. A lot of turkey was consumed. After all that, Brother-the-Younger and I fired up the kiln and bisqued my crappy coil pottery. It did not explode. Firing the kiln is not a particularly warm activity even though fire is involved.
Equipped with bisque pottery, now I have to mix up ash glaze, glaze the bisque, and then wait for another kiln-firing episode to see if we can for-real do watertight pottery. Because that would be awesome, even if it's clear or grey-green.
In pursuit of more information on ash glazes, I looked up some dude's masters thesis on the internet and he was all bitching about how difficult it was to obtain "reasonable" quantities of wood ash. And I thought to myself, "This dude does not heat with wood." Fortunately, no such difficulties on the availability of wood ash will be experienced on my watch. :) Especially not if it keeps being this damn cold.
On Friday, I played wood most of the day to clean up the huge oak tree that had fallen across the road. (Wednesday we just cut out enough tree to get to work.) There is still a lot of huge oak tree left to clean up. :( It doesn't look like we did shit, but we hauled two full F-250 truckloads of wood over to the horse people's and that should have made more of a dent than it did. Very discouraging.
On Saturday, I went to a damn cold auction with Brother-the-Younger, who bought an anvil for his blacksmithing. It was a fairly well-attended damn cold auction down Great Cove Road in McConnellsburg. There were lots of people in Carhartt overalls because it was damn cold. I should have worn mine, but instead I was damn cold for three hours. We didn't stay to see what the 220 acres of valley land bought because three hours is about my limit for being damn cold.
After the auction, I played lathe for the rest of the day. My shed isn't any warmer than the outside world but there is some windbreak available and when I'm interested, I get less cold. The auction was not all that interesting to me, whereas lathe is currently white-hot in terms of my personal enthusiasms.
I am busily working on lathe projects for the holiday gift season. Many people should expect holiday presents that have something of a roundish wooden aspect to them.
White oak bowl/vase thing. I'm pretty happy with how this came out. I am not saying it's flawless, but it's a good effort for where I'm at right now, or at least where I was at when I made this. The problem here is that my skills are improving every time I pick up the tools and I'm getting better at figuring out what sort of design kind of works. You'd think that would be a happy-making state of affairs, but it is not. Instead, what happens is that I become dissatisfied with the stuff I have finished (because I will do better next time and I have all these ideas for how to do better next time). Improvement, for me, brings dissatisfaction. *sigh* Anyway, I'm not ever going to be an artist but at this point I have a pretty good shot at not-horrible-craftsperson. This particular effort is going off to Chez NYR for her house, whether or not she wants it. It's 100% non-toxically finished in beeswax and mineral oil (both food-grade) so that should the children decide to eat it, there will be no problems.
Bowl, in cherry. This is my first effort at rim decoration -- there's a bead around the lip of the bowl, and I think it came out pretty well. The curves on this bowl are better (inside and out) than I've heretofore been doing -- I really worked at that on this effort. Figuring out what sort of curves look good is a process. Too, looking at this bowl, I think I can get away with a smaller foot on my bowls and I am going to have to try that going forward. Finally, I'd like a more obvious transition to the foot of the bowl, like a beaded foot or a curvey dent or something. That way the foot would look intentional instead of like a clunky afterthought thing. I'm going to have to try that as well.
I had turkey at the Horse People and then turkey at my mom's on Thursday. A lot of turkey was consumed. After all that, Brother-the-Younger and I fired up the kiln and bisqued my crappy coil pottery. It did not explode. Firing the kiln is not a particularly warm activity even though fire is involved.
Equipped with bisque pottery, now I have to mix up ash glaze, glaze the bisque, and then wait for another kiln-firing episode to see if we can for-real do watertight pottery. Because that would be awesome, even if it's clear or grey-green.
In pursuit of more information on ash glazes, I looked up some dude's masters thesis on the internet and he was all bitching about how difficult it was to obtain "reasonable" quantities of wood ash. And I thought to myself, "This dude does not heat with wood." Fortunately, no such difficulties on the availability of wood ash will be experienced on my watch. :) Especially not if it keeps being this damn cold.
On Friday, I played wood most of the day to clean up the huge oak tree that had fallen across the road. (Wednesday we just cut out enough tree to get to work.) There is still a lot of huge oak tree left to clean up. :( It doesn't look like we did shit, but we hauled two full F-250 truckloads of wood over to the horse people's and that should have made more of a dent than it did. Very discouraging.
On Saturday, I went to a damn cold auction with Brother-the-Younger, who bought an anvil for his blacksmithing. It was a fairly well-attended damn cold auction down Great Cove Road in McConnellsburg. There were lots of people in Carhartt overalls because it was damn cold. I should have worn mine, but instead I was damn cold for three hours. We didn't stay to see what the 220 acres of valley land bought because three hours is about my limit for being damn cold.
After the auction, I played lathe for the rest of the day. My shed isn't any warmer than the outside world but there is some windbreak available and when I'm interested, I get less cold. The auction was not all that interesting to me, whereas lathe is currently white-hot in terms of my personal enthusiasms.
I am busily working on lathe projects for the holiday gift season. Many people should expect holiday presents that have something of a roundish wooden aspect to them.
White oak bowl/vase thing. I'm pretty happy with how this came out. I am not saying it's flawless, but it's a good effort for where I'm at right now, or at least where I was at when I made this. The problem here is that my skills are improving every time I pick up the tools and I'm getting better at figuring out what sort of design kind of works. You'd think that would be a happy-making state of affairs, but it is not. Instead, what happens is that I become dissatisfied with the stuff I have finished (because I will do better next time and I have all these ideas for how to do better next time). Improvement, for me, brings dissatisfaction. *sigh* Anyway, I'm not ever going to be an artist but at this point I have a pretty good shot at not-horrible-craftsperson. This particular effort is going off to Chez NYR for her house, whether or not she wants it. It's 100% non-toxically finished in beeswax and mineral oil (both food-grade) so that should the children decide to eat it, there will be no problems.
Bowl, in cherry. This is my first effort at rim decoration -- there's a bead around the lip of the bowl, and I think it came out pretty well. The curves on this bowl are better (inside and out) than I've heretofore been doing -- I really worked at that on this effort. Figuring out what sort of curves look good is a process. Too, looking at this bowl, I think I can get away with a smaller foot on my bowls and I am going to have to try that going forward. Finally, I'd like a more obvious transition to the foot of the bowl, like a beaded foot or a curvey dent or something. That way the foot would look intentional instead of like a clunky afterthought thing. I'm going to have to try that as well.