Hot & Shiny on a Cold, Cold Day: First Raku Firing

How does a piece of clay turn into something potentially useful and possibly beautiful? Ask Janai, not me. First, successfully throw a pot on the wheel (again, ask Janai -- not me). Or sculpt something (that, you can ask me about). Then dry the successful output until bisque comes out. (see photo of kiln below.) Then coat the stuff with raku glazes (see photo showing the glazers, and the glazees on the hood of the Datsun, at right).

Then add about 1800 deg (that's between cone 07 and cone 06 for you kiln buffs) for a couple minutes, extract into a reducing fire (basically a smoldering paper and pine needle trash fire) for about five minutes or so, and then immerse in cold water. Apparently this must be done for J-termers when it's about 15 deg F. Voila -- new and shiny works of art emerge, as seen below.

Now, how about that? We've still got some more firings to do next week. More pix of the process are shown below -- note particulary the glowing kiln contents and the reducing fire.