Friday, March 13, 2009

First Barbecue


We had the first barbecue of 2009 on Monday a la Jamaica. Not exactly a 100 mile diet. The pork may be local, but the rum, plantains and hot house peppers were definitely imported. Maybe someone should introduce a carbon tax fund for those of us who cannot stand the idea of another brussel sprout come March.

Ribbons O Clay

Back to making tiles today. We had a problem on Wednesday when the extruder Mark I kind of blew up. The ready rod bent and the rotating motion of the plunger on the drill introduced a gyrating motion that eventually got so bad it jammed up and torqued the whole machine into a curve. Amazing how much pressure can be put on a device like that. The 5/8th plywood base was actually bent about 1/2" up from the table where it was clamped. We only got about 6 feet of extruded clay out before we had to give it up.
So Engineer Boy went back to the drawing board and changed the plunger motion to straight down with a lever. He totally stole the idea from a commercially made extruder. We attached it to the wall so the ribbon of clay comes out and is held straight by gravity until I can catch it. I have to stand on a chair to raise the lever high enough, but that gives me several feet of space below for a long ribbon. You can see the grey stripe below the tube in the picture. If you want to see a similar version in motion, there is an expert village video here which is where EB got the new design concept.

Today I extruded these ribbons. Once they set up a little I will cut them to length and smooth them out a bit. We only need about 30 tiles in total so this should be enough in addition to what we made on Wednesday. The Mark II works well but it is difficult to get the plunger back up out of the tube. There is extreme suction working to keep it in there, and I have to lever it out again. Engineer Boy thinks if he makes the disc out of plastic and a little smaller diameter, that it will get easier.
You might wonder why, now that we have what we need for tiles, we continue to refine the design. Extruders are great fun, and besides tiles they can make handles, coils, hollow tubes for wind chimes and sides for baking wear.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Kiln Snafu

I had a disappointing bisque fire yesterday. I was firing butter dishes, which are rather large for my teensy kiln. They are tall enough that the top shelf needed to be above the peep hole that lets me look into the kiln during firing. I had an awkward angle to try to see if the witness cone had started to bend. I thought I could see that it had started to bend, but apparently I was looking at something else completely because when I opened it up this morning I realised it was under fired.

What to do? I'm not sure how my glazes will react on under fired bisque ware. They could develop cracks or bubbles or holes. I could re-fired the bisque but that is annoying as it takes all day, and requires me to hang around. I also fired some pattern stamps I made. I was not going to bother glazing these, but now I may glaze their handles for testing how the glaze reacts to the bisque ware. If it is a disaster, then I will re fire the bisque, but if the glaze works out I won't bother.
Leaf, turtle, sun and ladybug stamps.

Today however we are back to making tiles.

Thursday, March 5, 2009

How Much Wood Could A Woodchuck Chuck?

We ordered fire wood the other day. This is a new experience for us. We installed the wood stove only 6 months before we left for NL, and we had lots of carpentry scraps of softwood to burn in the few fires we made. When we got home, there were some softwood ends left by our tenants that we burned, but that ran out about 2 weeks ago. As winter is not really over yet, we thought it prudent to order some in case the power went off. It arrived last Friday. The power went off Monday.
This is about four cords. We have no idea how much we will actually burn, but we hope this will be a 2 year supply, so that we can always have a year in reserve drying out.
I'm not sure about woodchucks, but I know that this pile took us about an hour to chuck. Friday was a sunny day and the afternoon temps were above freezing. The ground wasn't frozen at all beneath the snow we cleared for the pile, and the higher temperatures made it softer still. The delivery truck got stuck in the mud backing up with the second load. He had to dump the load too close to the driveway and get our truck to haul him out. It was a comedy of errors, his truck was almost axle deep in mud, ours had no traction on the still hard packed ice of the driveway. Finally though, with much revving and swearing, it lurched free.
While the driver was off getting the third load, we had to chuck the second closer to the first to make room for the rest. Then we did it again with the third load so that the fourth wouldn't be on the driveway. We will wait until spring to pile it up properly.

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Carnage

I find that most weather reporting is overblown, and I've started to disregard much of it. Like the boy who cried wolf. Last week they were forecasting that the weekend would be nasty; feet of snow followed by rain and freezing rain. Well, they got a third right, the weekend was grey and a bit drizzly, but Monday we did get about 6-8 hours of rain alternating with freeing rain. The two large trees outside our sun porch (aka the studio) lost a lot of branches in a very short time. Three large branches came down right where we park the truck usually, but we did have the forethought to move the truck to a safer location when it started to look bad. The first branch came down four minutes later. Another branch took out the clothes line. There are still three or four 'widow makers' in the crown just hanging there waiting to fall in the next wind storm. I got out the step ladder and my pruning saw to cut them out but couldn't reach up high enough. I only managed to cut of the the bits trailing down that would hit the truck as it passed under.
This is a species of tree that is known for being messy with falling twigs. It is called a Chinese Elm in these parts, but the bark description doesn't fit the two species of tree with that common name. I think it's really an upright habit of a Siberian Elm, Ulmus pumila, but I've never been completely certain. At any rate, I like the shade these provide my south windows in the summer, but they will need replacing sooner rather than later, especially if we get another ice storm. So sad.
I will have to call my arborist friend Tony to come back and clean up the broken jagged branches left way up in the canopy.