A Vase's Journey — Iron, Refires & Failures.

[Applause] those of you who followed me for long enough may remember the video where I mix iron oxide Spangles into my usual stoneware and throw a vars with it and in this video I'll be showing you the results finally although the vars ended up taking a journey I didn't quite expect these are the iron Spangles I use which I'll mix into my usual high iron stoneware clay body with the hope that the vars will be flecked with all these dots of iron once reduction fired to Cone 10 normally if I don't mix any of this into my clay I'll still have a number of iron dots appear on the pots I make due to the iron content the clay already has but by mixing these iron Spangles into it the effect should be really exaggerated although at this point I didn't really know what a good ratio to add was so if anything this is just an experiment as I know what should happen but not quite to what extent so I simply placed a small handful of the Spangles onto the clay and then gave it a really good mix as I need the iron to be distributed evenly in the lump as otherwise it could very easily be concentrated all in one spot once roughly mixed I then spiral wedge the lump of stoneware to bring the piece of clay together and to remove any tiny pockets of air there could be inside as these only create issues later on especially when the pot is thrown as it causes you to encounter small patches of uneven thickness in the walls of the pot that in turn can create wobbles and undulations in the form of the vessel so wedging like this before throwing is Paramount the lump is then rolled up with a rounded base this way it won't trap air beneath it when it's firmly chucked against the wheel head I then fill up this jug with some hot water to throw with and the process can begin by fling the clay down into the middle of the wheel and scoop some water onto the lump of soft stoneware as throughout the throwing procedure the clay needs to remain hydrated so it can flow easily through your hands I begin by combing the lump of clay up and down numerous times this helps to align the particles that make up the clay body and mixes it further sort of like wedging but on the Wheel the piece of clay is then Force down into a low Puck shape with a flat top and flat sides and it needs to be spinning perfectly with no undulation in it whatsoever and often instead of watching the piece of clay to do this I'm actually looking at my hands and if they're completely steady even with the clay rotating quickly beneath them then generally that's a good sign that the clay is centered properly I then plunge my thumbs into the center until the base is about five millimeters thick and from that point I drag my fingers out horizontally across the base without pushing down any further as it's okay having a base that's slightly too thick as you can trim it back later but if the base is too thin you'll begin running into some issues and you might not have enough material to even work with when it comes to turning the base and finishing off the pot with the foundation set I Can Begin pulling up the walls and forming the shape of the vars this is a relatively gradual process and one that relies on your movements being very steady and controlled I push the clay in around the base and just above that I'm pushing out with my fingertips from the inside I then lift this bulge of material up squeezing it through my fingertips which extrudes it almost into a thinner wall and raises the height of them which is my goal at this point ideally when this pot is more or less finished I want the walls to be even throughout this means I don't want the lower section of the wall to be particularly thicker than the rest of the pot as otherwise when holding it it'll feel as if it's bottom heavy which isn't something I want so at this stage I really try my best to get as much of that weight out from the lower section and into the walls of the vars between each pull I cover the walls with more slip and water and from the moment I squeeze around the base I move my hands at a very steady and even Pace from bottom to top as if you suddenly move quicker or slower or even change the pressure between your fingertips then the wall itself may become uneven due to your movements themselves being inconsistent and when my fingers finally reach the top I release my fingers very gently from the rim as if I pinch through it I can make the remain and sharp and I may not have an adequate amount of material to throw a proper Rim from equally if I ever release my hands too quickly from the vars at any point whatsoever it'll impart an undulation on the shape which is why whenever I take my hands off the pot at the throwing stage I always detach them very gently and it's at this stage that I start to think about the actual shape of the pot I want to make so I begin to very gradually push the walls out from the inside to create a more rounded bulbous shape which eventually I'll introduce my characteristic angles too if you're wondering if I can feel the iron Spangles in the clay the answer is no this clay body although it looks very smooth contains a fair amount of Grog this is pre-fired ceramic material that's added back to Clay in various grades and it adds strength to the body by making it shrink less which means it's less likely to warp or crack it also adds texture of course which some Potters prefer when throwing in trimming pots so mixed with that the iron Spangles are barely recognizable and the clay feels more or less like it always does with my vars forms to keep the proportions similar across all of my work I try to throw the lowest tapering section so it accounts for more or less half of the vertical height any less and these angular forms begin feeling quite Stout and heavy visually at least and even though pots are very tactile objects that you pick up and hold there's still so much information you take from them just by looking at them before you even pick one up and it's the rims of pots I think which convey the most information a thick blocky room will convey that the pot itself is rather thick and heavy whereas a thin delicate Rim will lead you to believe the pot is very thin and light but neither necessarily have to be true and as a Potter you can to some degree play with people's expectations with the rough shape of the vars Throne I Can Begin refining The Walls by scraping away much of the excess slip off them which I Do by pushing the clay out against the metal Edge this leaves the pot with a drier surface one that should help the pot dry out more quickly so it can be trimmed and it'll make it easier to lift the pot away after it's been thrown I use the trimmer to lightly scrape back the rim to make it more level and as I will be trimming this pot all over I don't worry about making it completely perfect at this point as it's often easier and a bit safer to do that refinement at the trimming stage when the pot is leather hard to remove the vas from the wheel a glider taut Twisted Metal wire underneath it and then with dry hands I carefully clasp the pot and lift it away and from this point the pot will sit out overnight slowly becoming leather hard as moisture leaves it the pot will be much firmer at that stage and I'll be able to easily lift it up and move it around without deforming its shape to attach the pot to the wheel I brush some slip onto the wheel head this is just watered down clay and then I tap Center the pot rhythmically until it's spinning perfectly in the middle of the wheel I then use a rubber kidney just to squash a tiny portion of the wall against the metal wheel head helping to seal it in place and then to begin with I'll trim the rim removing that slight undulation that's appeared overnight as the form is dried and I'll bevel the rim so it appears to come to a sharper point which will make the pot visually appear much lighter even if the walls underneath this sharp edge remain slightly thicker and with the lip sharpened I use a flat metal Edge just to flatten the walls on the inside and then a rubber kidney just to compress the lip making it glassy and smooth as this clay body when trimmed can become quite rough as all those particles of Grog within the clay body are revealed for much of my trimming I use these sharp tungsten carbide turning tools these particular ones are made by philpo burka of bison and they can be extraordinarily difficult to get a hold of but I love them the blades remain sharp for thousands of pots and he even turns the wooden handles so they fit the palm of your hand and this trimmer with its straight sharp blade works so wonderfully for the pots I make as they tend to be either completely cylindrical or made up of many flat planes like this vase but it's the very sharp corner of the tool which I really push in when I want to remove quite a lot of material at once and my aim at this stage is to trim the walls thinner to make the pot lighter overall and to really refine the shape by defining the Angles and making the entire shape more crisp it's also at this stage that I'll be able to finish the base of the pot so once I finish trimming these outer walls I'll flip the pot over carefully secure the piece in place and then finish the bottom all of the scraps of clay that are removed can really easily be recycled back into usable material by slaking it down in water and then drying that mixture out on a plaster bat until it resembles more or less the clay you get from the bag in terms of its consistency whereupon it's all wedged up like you saw me do at the beginning of this video or it's all fed through a pug mill which mixes the clay up and extrudes it through a Dye plate some even have vacuums inside the chamber that removes the air from the clay so you don't need to worry about any air pockets but generally I do this process by hand in fact I don't even own a pug mill but sometime in the future I'll have to bite the bullet and purchase one as I'm able to reach the fingers of my left hand inside the pot I can feel the opposite side of the wall I'm trimming which helps me judge the thickness of them after making pots for such a long time you gain a sort of awareness about how much clay you can remove from a pot simply by picking it up to begin with but if you are ever unsure there's nothing wrong about just simply stopping the wheel lifting the pot up to feel its weight and then attaching it back down if it needs to be trimmed more like anything it's all a matter of practice slice the valves Away by sliding a metal knife underneath it and then I clean the wheel head before placing the pot back down onto the wheel as I really don't want any large Speck of clay to embed itself into that Rim I've just so carefully finished and at this point I very lightly tap Center the pot and then secure the vars in place by pressing three lumps of soft clay around the rim this won't hold it perfectly and together with these I'll have to make sure that I apply constant downward pressure from the top of the pot like I'm doing with my fingers here to prevent the vessel from jumping up out of its restraints the final step is to trim the base itself which is beveled trimmed flat and then stamped with my Maker's Mark if you look closely at the vars you can see a very light chattering over the surface but it really is only visual I can barely feel it when I run my fingers over the surface and all of those marks will be hidden by the glaze that's eventually coated over this piece but for now I'll leave it uncovered to slowly turn bone dry over a number of days before it can be biscified to a thousand degrees Celsius using my electric kiln before I can do any firings though I need to make sure I have enough work in order to fill this Kiln properly this is my rotor te200 which has an internal capacity of 200 liters and it's essentially like a gigantic toaster with a lid that retains the heat from the elements that very gradually heat up overnight you have to make sure that the pots are completely bone dry before you fry them otherwise moisture can quickly turn to steam which can cause pots to explode into thousands of fragments I also try to pack each Kiln as densely as possible this way the firings are more cost efficient I then close it carefully and watch to make sure that no pots sit up too proudly as I obviously don't want the lid to crush them the Kiln is then switched on and fired overnight to just under 1000 degrees Celsius this firing causes the clay to undergo an irreversible process and it changes soft clay into hard ceramic about a day and a half later the Kiln can be unpacked and you can see the difference in color now they've been fired and also the fact that they've shrunk slightly in fact this clay body shrinks about 12 from freshly thrown to finely glazefied before the vars can be glazed I first need to brush a layer of wax over the base this creates a very simple resist and will prevent the now porous clay from having a layer of glaze adhere to it wherever this Emulsion is coated this is a water-based wax Emulsion which I mix with a bit of boiling water as it helps it last for longer and brush on a bit more smoothly this won't act like a perfect seal and some small specks of glaze will settle on the wax but it makes the process of tidying up each pot after it's been glazed much easier I'll be coating this pot with a felt spatic crackle glaze with a colorant of two percent red iron oxide which whilst red here will fire to a deep dark green essentially though this is a mixture of all kinds of different raw materials like feldspar nephilene cyanide Whiting China clay and talc that's mixed with water and sieved the water acts as our means of transport and when the pot is dipped into this mixture the water will be absorbed into the porous bars leaving a layer of all those raw materials on the outside of the pot some glazes need to be thicker some applied more thinly and this particular recipe settles quite quickly in a bucket so before it can be used it needs to be mixed thoroughly I then hold the pot from the inside and quickly push it into the glaze until it comes to the rim it's held there for a number of seconds so it can draw in a thick enough layer and then I lift the vessel out and shake off some of the excess around the base for many of my pots I glaze the outside first and then the inside that's just my particular way of doing it for this particular recipe it's what has given me the best results is by glazing like this I can get very clean flush surfaces on the outside although in this case I didn't glaze it quite high enough so I had to brush on some more glaze and clean up the interior portion of the rim thereafter The Next Step will be glazing the inside but I can't do that until the clay body is completely dried out as it's already just been saturated with water which means if I were to immediately pour clothes in and then out a thick enough layer wouldn't adhere to the interior surface so instead I wait until the next day to do this when the clay has fully dried out this way a similar thickness of glaze will adhere on the inside as compared to the outside I then pick the pot up swirl the glaze around and then pour it out slowly in a few rotations so it leaves a nice thick layer around the top and to quickly explain where I do the outside first my glaze is dry in quite a delicate layer and if I coated the inside first and let it dry and then gripped it from the inside to push it underneath the glaze to coat the outside I'm pretty sure the amount of pressure I'd need to use to push the pot underneath could be enough to damage the glazed surface inside whereas I feel it's safer to handle the outside of the glaze pot without it potentially being damaged as I don't have to grip it nearly so hard about a day or so later now that the entire pot has dried out I'll spend some time carefully settling away any excess strips and generally just neatening up the surface I use the edge of a paring knife to do this and my fingertips and I'm trying to make the glaze as uniform as possible all the way around the glaze at this point is very powdery and soft and it's extraordinarily delicate especially around the rim and one small knock is easily enough to damage the glazed surface so I take my time and really focus as the tidier the glaze is at this point the better the pot is going to look once fired foreign there's always a few little craters left on the surface so I rub over the worst of those although even after 10 years of making pots I don't know if this is actually necessary or if they simply melt over if I can see the clay body itself through them then they're definitely worth correcting but some just sit on the surface and I'm sure those are quite inconsequential the last section that needs to be tidied up is the base of the pot itself here I need to make sure that I remove any Speck of glaze from the bottom as all it takes is one tiny drop to fuse the pot to the Kiln shelf which could be enough to damage the pot I also make sure that the line between Clays and Clay is as clean as it can be I don't want it to waver or be uneven instead I want it to be neat and straight all the way around and I also make sure there's absolutely no glaze plugging my Maker's Mark so I give that tiny Notch a good scouring over and with enough pots glazed it's finally time to pack my gas Kiln this is a rotor kg 340 which is fueled with natural gas and like its name tells you has a capacity of 340 liters which is 12 cubic foot I pack this very densely just like my electric kiln although in this instance no two parts can touch as their glazed surfaces turn to Molten glass during this firing and if two pots happen to touch then they'll be fused together and I'll have to break them in order to separate them the Kiln is lit with the doors open this way unignited gas can't fill the chamber up which is then suddenly ignited which can cause an explosion so once all four burners are lit I tightly sealed the door and the firing can commence properly it's very slow at the beginning and I gradually increase the gas pressure and air pressure until the gas Kiln reaches 860 degrees Celsius at this point I slide the damper over the flues and dramatically increase the gas and air this places the Kiln into a state called reduction where the fuel inside isn't burning efficiently as there's simply not enough oxygen inside the chamber for the amount of fuel burning inside as it's throttled and can't escape quickly enough the burning fuel therefore finds oxygen from inside the pots and the glazes themselves thus changing their colors and giving you qualities you can't quite achieve when using an electric kiln where oxygen is plentiful I measure whether the heat is going up and down by following the digital pyrometer but there's also something else I'm watching which I can only see through these spy holes and that's observing pyrometric cones I've packed alongside my pots inside the Kiln which you can just about see here bent over this is what they look like before they're fired and as the temperature increases past certain ranges these very slowly melt and bend over measure and heat work which is heat over time and here's what they look like afterwards and when they're all roughly in this position I know it's time to conclude the firing which is usually at about 1300 degrees Celsius and after about eight and a half hours the noisy Kiln can finally be switched off I then fully open the dampers and the buns in the Spy holes and let the Kiln crash call to 1000 degrees Celsius this helps to retain gloss and color 36 hours later and the kilners at long last ready to be opened which is always slightly even after all these years is a relatively scary moment because even though I know the firing went well and I followed my kiln firing charts accurately everything has still been locked away in a chamber and you haven't really been able to see it as a painter you put the final touch on a canvas you make the decision of when something is finished but as a Potter you hand over that responsibility to the Kiln so it is somewhat out of your control and here's that vars made with Clay mixed with iron Spangles and I wasn't sold it just seems too over the top as if it's covered in camouflage I love the metallic brown spots and they cover the pot in too uniform away dominating the green glaze which I should have coated on a bit more thickly otherwise it was a really good haul of work but I didn't let this speckled virus stay around for long and instead I decided to coat it in a thick layer of yellow iron oxide and then fire the pot for a second time I simply mix this with a tiny bit of water until it makes a thick slurry which I then brush onto the pot both inside and out this isn't necessarily something new I've been doing and if you've been following Along on my Instagram or if you've watched my shorts here on YouTube you will have seen me do this to pots already in order to potentially save pieces I don't like it works especially well on bowls as they have a simple curvaceous interior into which all this extra metal can melt and flow mixing with the glaze underneath to create something new but this is definitely the largest piece I've tried this technique with nor have I ever tried it with a pot that contains so many iron Spangles so in some ways I really have no idea what to expect when I fire this next this iron clings to the surface of the pot wonderfully although it's an irritating substance to use as those of you who've tried this might know as it stains everything it's also worth mentioning at this point that I've only tested this technique when firing pots in a reduction atmosphere with gas iron will act differently in an oxidized atmosphere as compared to a reduced atmosphere so please before you test this yourself know that your results might not look like anything shown in this video Iron is a flux in reduction meaning it melts and moves whereas in oxidation it isn't a flux so it just won't react in the same way this does the problem with this stuff which I could probably fix with a bit of gum arabic is that it easily comes off on my fingertips when holding and moving the pot around so before I load it into the Kiln for a second firing I dry it off a bit although I didn't end up firing this pot for a really long time as it is a re-fire it doesn't take priority over other work so it's sat waiting in my studio go until I had an appropriate kill node of work this pot could be packed into So eventually after a second firing it was time to see what this pot looked like for a second time and once again it just looked a bit murky it wasn't metal enough for my liking I prefer when these iron pots are iridescent and Shimmer and look almost as if they've been cast from metal or a some strange hybrid of the two and at the moment its surface is so shiny it's quite difficult to see what's even going on so you guessed it I'll be coating the pot in iron for a third time and I'll be reduction firing it for a third time too there's a point where if this is brushed on too thickly it'll begin to crack and Flake off which can happen during the firing littering the work around it with shards of molten iron so if when this dries I see patches beginning to crack and fall off I'll simply wash the iron away wait for the pot to dry and then do this process again and once again this firing is a few months later and I had an awkward spot in a layer of much taller work which I needed to fill as it's much easier to achieve a good reduction when these Kilns are densely packed as there's simply less space for oxygen to occupy and here we go for firing number three well this one in front looks more promising but it's not the particular shape we've been following for this journey I'll have to dig in a bit deeper to find that and wait a bit longer for the pots to cool down and here at long last is the vars which is much better now I think although I'm sure all of you watching this video may have preferred it at another Point although it's still glossy in places there are now much larger patches of eggshell-like crimson metal and the base is so toasted and speckled with iron it looks quite ridiculous as it's now finished I can give the bass a quick sand just to soften over any of the sharp specks that reside down below that could scratch any table top or Surface it's placed upon and now I'll take a real look at it but totally One of a Kind pod that took almost a year to complete and apologies for the Overexposed video here but it's the only way I could really show the interior surface and all the molten metal rivulets inside in many ways these are very difficult objects to show as the light they're displayed in makes a huge difference and in person when you can really peer these pots closely there's just so much going on and they feel far more red in real life like a deep dark chromosome as opposed to looking quite Brown here part of me wants to coat it in even more iron and fire it again to see just how far I can take this but the rim itself is becoming quite coarse and sharp as it looks like the iron is almost eating away at the clay but we'll see it would be interesting to hear what you think so please do let me know in the comments of this video and if you manage to watch all the way through to the end I'm so pleased you enjoyed this journey even if we did end up with a slightly strange pod I can't help but love it thanks so much for taking your precious time to watch and I'll see you next time

Channel: Florian Gadsby

Views: 175,576

Keywords: pottery, how to throw on the wheel, how to make pottery, Florian Gadsby, floriangadsby, handmade pottery, wheel throwing, pottery asmr, ceramics, how to throw pottery, pottery for beginners, wheel thrown pottery, making pottery, pottery wheel, pottery vase, how to throw a vase, stoneware vase, how to make a vase, vase pottery, vase ceramics, trimming vase, trimming pottery vase, throwing a vase, turning a vase, how to trim a vase, trimming pottery, turning pottery, making

Id: xwS9gLVFDew

Length: 26min 40sec (1600 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 18 2023