How To Prepare Your Pots For Barrel/Pit Firing

hi as I get ready to do a barrel fire I have a lot of things to consider first up is the pot and I am going to make a bunch of pots prior to a barrel fire and because this is a new situation for me I'm doing a couple of kinds of clay but I make a lot of forms of different shapes and sizes I like forms that are Bullas that have nice clean surfaces so that I can't get a good smoke effect on those I think they're prettier that way so I like little vessels as well and so I have a variety of these if we're a we're a barrel fire you need at least I'm going to say 10 to 12 medium sized pots and then you can throw in a few of the little ones if you need to I'm pretty excited about some of the new products I've just found for sanding the pot so one of the first things you let it dry completely and then you need to sand it and get off all the all the throw marks any little imperfections and you can do that with sandpaper I'm gonna show you a couple of things I used to work for three Oh too bad I don't still maybe they'd give me some of these for free anyway they now have these sponge Sanders that have all kinds of little edges that are for detailing with a very fine grit so that's cool that's new then the other thing they have are they have flexible sandpaper and it feels like it's almost on a rubber backing and this is ultra flexible detail sanding and it's those finest grit so that's that's cool the other thing I like to use is drywall sanding now this is the first sand this is what you use when you have real imperfections the lines that you need to get rid of any little boogers that are hanging on to get them off and I just this is one I just used and it's a clog resistant durable 100 grit and it says you can use it wet or dry for drywall and what I have done I'll just cut out a little section of it so that it's easier for me to use because it is not it folds but it's not very flexible and then this is the one that I'm trying today and it's flexible sanding sheets for wet or dry this is the medium sand and then I'll go to the final one so that I get a very fine finish on the cool thing about these is I'm making see them but it's just like rubber and I've been sanding down this pot with this one and then if the sand and stuff all comes off I mean clean it up so that's cool so in the next little segment I'm going to take us outside because you do not want to do this inside if you can avoid it because there's lots and lots of dust and you should wear a protective mask so you don't inhale all that clay particles so hang on and we'll be standing in a pot in just a minute hey there we're ready to sand the pot we're outside today just to get my studio new you're like so key here boats and kids screaming and you hear my dog my dog comes in the video I just know that this is where I live there's lots of activity ok so this is a pot that I started sanding on the other day and I'm going to show you what I've done but I started out using this little piece of drywall sander and it has open strings and very very rough so the good thing about that is is that the lid on this didn't fit just perfectly and it gave me the ability just trim it off just a little bit so now it's a great fit on the lid so the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to stand with this medium grit flexible see it's kind of shiny on the back it's like a plasticy sand paste very cool and then I'm going to sand with the finer grit clay it's even thinner and it'll be absolutely smooth when I'm finished and then I will be putting tarragon it on the next section and showing me how to shine it up so here we go I got to put on a mask I'm not gonna be talking during this part of it now I'm not gonna I'm not gonna video be sanding it sanding and sanding you can sand as much as you want and or as little as you want to get it as smooth as you like it but that's the process and once you get it sanded and blow all it sand off then you can take it inside and do the next process which is to apply the Terra stick and furnish it hi everybody complains about how hard it is to to make Terra stick to put on your pots before you put them in a barrel fire and this is Maria stealth surge recipe and I was just going to go over it again I'm giving our total credit cuz this is none of mine but it works like a charm it's super super easy here is the recipe and it's not really very well but what you do is take out get a liter coke bottle I had to drink that and fill it 3/4 full of water okay then measure out with your scales and if you don't have scales like this then get digital scales and this is ball play and use a mask when you work with ball play so I'm going to put that on that's 250 grams and so ball play is their various kinds I'm just using plain old ball player so now I'm gonna have to put my mask on and off during this when you're using ball fight you just it's like silica or any other chemicals you need be careful now to make a funnel don't go to a lot of trouble get a piece of paper wind it up to make a little funnel so that you have a hole for your ball clay to go be in going to put the ball play into the bottle now that you've got your 250 grams ball clay into the bottle put them in along the bottle shake vigorously that's 2 T now now you take the lid off again and this is sodium silicon and just put in a few drops a bit I put in like a teaspoon or so now shake that up again so this is the first part of how to do this now you just let this sit for like an hour and a little bit I'll come back and show you how you get the actual terra-save that you're going to use to put on your package we've had about an hour wait and I don't know if you can see but there is a separation between the light and the dark and down at the bottom it's much darker so what we're trying to do is get a very very fine slip that we're gonna then paint on the pots so that the this process of making tears it gives you you keep all the heavy coarse grain down here and the nice thin slip is up at the top so you put it in a container that you're going to collect it in and then we're going to cut a slit in the jar right above the thickness so it looks like it's about down here at the bottom so I'm going to just poke a hole in here this really crummy knife and now all the good stuff is going to drain out and leave all the sediment have the larger particles that you don't want in the bottom of the bottle so right now all we're getting out is nice thin terracing the stuff that's in the bottom and just throw it away so you drain it down so where that slit is and then quit so now we got probably a couple of cops at chair sig which you would use to paint on your brush which I'll show you in the next video then polish it to a high Sheen hey I'm back and the pot has been sanded and we're ready to tear a cig it this is the Patera stick that we made earlier today and it's ready to go so that's all you need the sanded pot and a sponge I use just a very fine grained sponge and I'm just going to cut off a little section of it and you can use facial sponges you can use shammies whatever suits you but this is seems to work for me and that's what I'm going to do so just to show you what you have to do and you can do this three to four times per pot just to get the look you want use a fan brush or something that's got an we'll take up a nice amount of stuff you can even use a rubber sponge the trick is to not get drips try really hard not to get drips because they show and then you'll be mad so get a really good coating on there completely cover it and you let it dry for just a little bit and I'll be putting it on this pot as well now when you're doing these kind of pots they're super fragile because you have not missed them yet so in the very beginning I broke a lot of my pots miss handling them or holding them improperly and very frustrating because so if you get through to the very end and have beautiful pots and you have done a lot so the trick of this one is now that I'm going to add more I'm going to add the Tara stick I just need to be super super careful I put it on the bottom as well as on the size because you want it to be as pretty as the rest of the pot and like I said you just if you see a drip grab it do you not let it happen don't go crazy over coding it because at this point you just need a fine coating you're gonna go back and do this two or three times per pot so that way you get plenty of testing on it and you don't have to put it all in one go some people do this on the wheel or with a banding wheel for me I especially this size pot I find that I get a better coverage if I'm very vigilant and can just handle it myself so you do what works for you but this is that's what works for me and I just have found that I have to really be careful and be able to you know catch it before a big drop happens so now you just it's it's dry enough you can start buffing it now so now what you do is you just take the sponge and you just start get it in a grass but where you're not gonna break it but then just rub it as far as you can't not hard enough that you start to see the sheen and you will do this until it's shiny shiny shiny so your pots are gonna end up looking gorgeous like a little marble and the burn marks on it are gonna show up so beautifully you're just gonna be amazed so I'm gonna just put that aside and I'm gonna also just show you a little bit of the burnishing of this one I kind of hold it up against me sometimes it's kind of a barrier so I don't hold it too too tight but I can get it really rubbed so I get a sheen happening I hope you can see the sheen that is happening on the pots because it comes up really quickly and can look really gorgeous and it just turns a little dinky pot into a masterpiece so you're gonna be doing this for awhile it doesn't happen overnight put on some good music put the fan on so you don't get too hot and just this is something I like to do in the middle of the night when nobody's up husband's sleep and and I had a you know I just can't sleep I don't have something else I want I did and you can just sit and do this it's mindless pleasure just rub it rub it rub it and you can come up with some beautiful beautiful work but by the end after you've got it completely polished and it's not gonna be completely polished you in this video it's gonna look so much better so good luck with your burnishing it's not that hard tear six not that hard and I think you'll see at the very end of this process how pretty it can be

Channel: Marian Williams

Views: 7,771

Rating: 4.8319325 out of 5

Keywords: Barrel firing, Pitfiring, Terra, Sigelatta, Ceramics, Pottery, yt:cc=on

Id: HnzDcalkOzs

Length: 14min 23sec (863 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 11 2018