Mud Oven - Part 3

We're in the home stretch with the construction of this mud oven. Lots of times all the steps we've done over the past few weekends could have been done over a couple days, but since we're only around on weekends, we've had to space the steps out a bit.
Last weekend, the previous two layers of mud applied over the sand dome form were dry enough for Kevin to remove the sand and the dome would still retain it's shape.



After the sand was removed we applied one more layer of mud mixed with straw to the entire dome and started a small fire inside to help it dry a little more. Kevin assured me it was a task that could be done without getting one's hands dirty. What's the fun of working with mud and not getting your hands in it?

Kevin spent a little time carving a door from a large piece of oak . When baking in the oven, you keep a fire going for a couple hours to heat up the mud and bricks, then remove the fire and use a door to keep the heat while you bake for a couple hours.


The entire oven was still fairly wet so we couldn't really cook anything since it would not hold heat well. Hopefully, we'll be baking/cooking the weekend of October 10th. I'm sure looking forward to some pizza and a couple loaves of bread.

I'd Like You To Meet...

As many of you know, my daughter Gabby, is a tattoo artist in St. Paul, Minnesota. She completed her 18 month apprenticeship a few months ago and is now a full fledged tattoo artist. Tattoo artists all have interesting stories about the people who visit their shop and the tattoos they have done. Gabby has started a blog where she can share some of these stories as well as some inside explanations of the process and industry. Click here to visit her blog.

Gabby has always been a very talented artist so becoming a tattoo artist was really about learning to do the tattoo part. Many people who become tattoo artists don't have the art background she had and not only need to learn tattooing, but also have to learn art skills.

Mud Oven - part 2

This past weekend, my husband put the next layer of mud on the oven. I wasn't able to be around, so there are quite a few less photos, but he was busy with the mud so I guess that's OK.


First he cut the door area out of the first layer of mud he'd applied a couple weeks ago. It's very important to keep the door to a certain proportion to the size of the oven.


Next, the door needed to be shaped and softened. Would you believe an empty beer can was the perfect tool to smooth the inside curve of the door opening? Unfortunately, all our beer cans were full and one (just one??) needed to be emptied to be used.

Then it was time for the next layer of mud. This layer was a combination of clay, crushed insulating fire brick and straw. It is a little thinner than the first layer, but will be covered with yet another layer in the coming week or two.

As a related project, we're looking for a 10" or less peel to get things in and out of the oven door. We might need to make something appropriate if we can't locate one. And of course by "we", I mean Kevin. Anybody have any suggestions?

Check back again to read about the final mud layer and eventually, our first baking.

Be well.

Look... a distraction!

While not-so-patiently waiting for the kiln to cool and the things I threw yesterday to be ready to trim, I've used my time to prepare some photos to list things in my Etsy shop. Editing photos is kind of a tedious task for me, but it's a necessity in the online world.

This particular container was also just listed in my Etsy shop today. I love how the blue and green combine. The leaf sprig is a little hard to see, but it is a fun addition to the piece.

Have a great week everybody!

Re-do

What they're supposed to look like

Earlier this week, I had several custom pieces in the kiln for a glaze fire. Wouldn't you know -- I had a kiln failure during the slow cool which is essential to create the deep Iron Red colors these pieces were supposed to have. Now the pieces that came out weren't ruined by any means, but they certainly didn't match the other pieces of this custom order out of earlier firings.

What this firing looked like

So... today will be spent making replacement pieces for the order and determining a cause of the failure. It appears the kiln just wasn't cooling at the rate it was programmed, so it shutdown. Maybe just too tightly loaded. I've got some test pieces (aka weird, random pieces I had laying around) firing now to see if the failure is repeated.



Hopefully, all goes well with this firing and I can get the new pieces made and out the door to the very patient couple who ordered them.

Keep you fingers crossed.

How exciting?

Several months ago, I was interviewed about how I utilize the Internet to operate, grow and expand my business. Here is the online version of the article in The Crafts Report.



It is very interesting to read how other crafters use the Internet as well.



If anyone happens to have the printed version of this article, I'd love to see that. I think there are photos also included in that version.



Have a great week.

My Last Summer Show

We had great weather at the Northfield Riverfront Arts Festival for our last show of the summer. It was just beautiful all weekend -- a little chilly in the shade in the morning, but that quickly gave way to a sunny, breezy, 70 degrees.

A couple times we had some pretty good wind gusts, one of which blew a plate off the shelf and onto the pavement. This caused a collective "oh" from everyone who heard it. Unfortunately, that wasn't the first broken pot of the day as I'd dropped a bowl while setting up earlier in the day. It made for a nice green and blue collection of shards to become future mosaic art.

After packing up at the end of the show many of the artists met on the patio to have an adult beverage and compare notes before heading our separate ways. It's great to be able to spend a little time sharing our successes, disappointments and funny stories at the end of a sale and the beverage is a bonus.


I left my camera unattended for just a second and look at the scary photo I found when I was downloading the sale photos.


Hope you all have a great week.

Riverfront Art Festival

I'm patiently waiting for the last glaze load from the kiln before packing things up for the Riverfront Art Festival this weekend in Northfield. It's always a great event with good traffic and lots a wonderful artists. This event is held in conjunction with Northfield's Defeat of Jesse James Days.

My booth can be found on the east side of the river, just north of Water Street. If you have some free time stop down, visit and check out all the wonderful art. Take a little extra time and watch the re-enactment of the bank robbery or parade.

A Pottery Topic

The last couple posts have been about other project and not about pottery, so I felt it was time to return to the primary topic on this blog.

I spent a little time working on some medium sized cylinder shapes out of B-Clay from Continental Clay this weekend. I'm still a few (or maybe a hundred) pots short of what I need to fire the wood kiln up for the first time so now I'm short a few less. In the past I've wood fired using a Buff Stoneware clay from Continental, but there are several other choices now I'd like to experiment with.

So far I've got a couple dozen pieces out of Buff Stoneware and maybe a hundred out of B-Clay. I also purchased 50lbs. of Tableware Stoneware and Soda Clay to add to the experiment. I'm hoping to have some pieces of each in the first firing to see what speaks to me.

Compared to the mid-range stoneware I usually use, the B-Clay is awesome to work with. It's so smooth and easy on the hands. Even the Buff is a joy to work with by comparison. I'll maybe have to give serious thought to a full scale switch of clay body.

Be well.

Mud Oven Progress

Over this long weekend, we spent a little time relaxing and visiting with friends which was really great. We also took advantage of the extra day off work to begin work on our latest project at the farm/studio - a mud oven (sometimes called a cob oven). My husband bakes amazing breads and is looking forward to baking in this primitive oven.

Kevin actually began the project last weekend by building a base for the oven. The base is on casters so we can move it around the kiln shed and tuck it out of the way while it's not in use.

With the base completed, this weekend we began with construction of the oven by soaking a hundred pounds of clay shavings left over from trimming my pottery in buckets of water to rehydrate the clay to be used in the inner layer of the oven.


Once the clay was ready, we spread a layer of sand to level the next layer of insulating fire bricks. On top of the insulating fire bricks, we placed a layer of fire brick

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Next, a dome of sand is placed on top of the fire bricks to create a mold for the oven shape


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On a tarp we mixed sand with the mud (clay) we moistened earlier.



A four inch layer of the sand/clay mixture is pressed over the sand mold.




And that's where the weekend ended. This layer on the oven will dry slowly for a while. Next it will receive a layer of clay and insulating material and followed by a third layer of clay. Check back in a couple weeks for the next segment of construction.

Long Weekend

We almost always seem to have some sort of project to accomplish over the weekend and this long holiday weekend is no different. On our list of things to get done this summer after the wood kiln construction was construction of a mud oven. We wanted this mud oven to be in the kiln shed and on casters so it can be moved around and tucked out of the way while the kiln is in use. The photo above is the base for the mud oven.

On top of this will be a layers of leveling sand, insulating fire brick, and high temp brick to create the floor of the oven. Once those are in place, a dome of sand will be molded on top of the floor. Several layers of clay and other insulting material will be spread over the dome of sand to create an igloo shaped outer layer. Once the clay is set up enough to hold it's shape, the sand is removed.

This oven will be perfect for the wonderful breads Kevin bakes as well as pizza or anything else we want to bake.

Photos of the next phase of oven construction will be posted as I have Internet access, maybe over the weekend but more than likely Monday.

Have a great holiday weekend.

Here's a pottery photo just justify calling this a pottery blog.