The morning after… trimming scraps ready to toss into my reclaim bucket!

Trimming some bowls with the perfect combo of trimming tools… my favorite trimming tool from DiamondCore Tools & my Giffin Grip. One holds ’em tight, and the other trims them smooth. Makes my job easy… even when my trimming tool blade is wearing thin. One of the benefits of DiamondCore Tools is that they remain sharp even while wearing down… and oh, but wait there’s more.. they even send you a replacement blade to switch out when this one eventually dies. But I still have a good amount of trimming with this one before that happens…

Well, it looks like I’ve got a good bit of trimming ahead of me today… hoping to get it all done before teaching class tonight?! A bunch of bowls at a good leather-hard state ready for trimming… one of my favorite parts of the whole process!

And now for the ever-popular… but never acknowledged “ugly” side of soda-firing. All of the parts that most people don’t ever realize happen behind-the-scenes… scraping kiln shelves, sweeping & mopping, stacking kiln furniture and my least favorite task… adding a new layer of kiln wash on all of the shelves I used in my firing. Luckily, I get to look at all the pretty pots after all of this drudge work!

Bricked up & closed for the night. It was a “quick sleep” and now I’m already back at the studio firing!!! Bricks in, peeps in & ignition started!!! An early start to a long day for firing… plus random studio “spring cleaning” projects throughout the day!

Lots of pots last night on my studio rolling cart… all glazed & wadded. Ready to start loading… looks like it might be a late night?! GIDDY-UP!

Like glazing wasn’t “fun” enough already… ugh… I also need to add little balls of wadding to the bottom of every pot being loaded into the soda kiln. Wadding is basically a soda-resistant clay that will help keep my pots from sticking to the kiln shelves after the soda-atmosphere adds a layer of glaze on everything!

A little early morning glazing! Flower pots now with a liner glaze & inlaid glaze in the stamps… both with my favorite tenmoku.

Next up for these?… wadding!!!

This batch of stamped mugs now has inlaid glaze in all the stamped impressions.

Next up?… tenmoku liner glazing! I like to work in an “assembly line” kind of process.
Finish one step, then move onto the next.

Glaze on… glaze off. Busy putting tenmoku glaze into the stamped impressions on my mugs. I like how the dark inlaid glaze really makes the stamped textures show up so much better!