THE CRAFT OF FIRE

We did the inaugural firing of our garbage can kiln on Saturday, and fired some clay pieces raku-style. It all worked amazingly well.  Well, some of the clay pieces weren't hot enough to ignite the sawdust because it took too long to put each individual piece in the can, so they didn't turn all black, but as far as the kiln goes and the raising of the temperature with the weed-burner, it worked perfectly. Only one piece cracked, and sure, looking over the schedule it's clear we went way too quickly from 400 °  to 800 ° , but we kept it pretty slow and steady from start to the crucial 400 mark anyway. And besides, it's always interesting if something goes wrong - otherwise it's hard to learn what you're doing right. Start - 12:10pm 100° C - 1:20 200° C - 2:10 300° C - 2:45 400° C - 3:15 800° C - 4:15 900° C - 4:30 915° C - 5:15 I had a few pieces that I had prepared with different iron oxide formulations, and I also f...

I've been wondering how to colour the clay and ceramic pieces I have, and of course I could go to the pottery supply store and pick up some glazes, but a) it's very far away and I don't have a car, and b) it seems more interesting to do something more 'primitive'. What could I use from around my house that would make an interesting mark? A few days ago I was out on the deck and noticed some rust stains on the wood beside the legs of a metal chair we have. Rust... iron oxide... of course! The theme then became how to get iron oxide. So I put some steel wool in a can with a bit of water and let it sit for a while. I also scraped some rust flakes off the lid of a metal can that coincidentally we're going to use when we do our raku firing next week. And lastly, after doing some internet trawling, I burned some steel wool because that apparently produces iron oxide.* The whole week long I saw rust everywhere. Everytime I walked my dog was a chance to find some ...

We made our garbage can kiln today, to do raku firings and then work with metal casting in my backyard. It's a 20L galvanized can, lined with 1" of ceramic fibre, held in place with some nichrome wire and "paper" ceramic fibre acting as a gasket inside, so the thicker fibre doesn't tear. Normally you'd make ceramic buttons and thread the wire through those, but since we didn't have a kiln to make the buttons in the first place - a kind of chicken-and-egg scenario - we went with this design which seems to work fine. We cut a 4.5" outlet at the top of the kiln and a 3" hole near the bottom for the 100,000 BTU weed-burner I found on craigslist. And then sprayed the inside with rigidizer which helps protects the fibre a bit. The whole thing took a leisurely and enjoyable 4 hours. We'll test drive it in a few weeks...

Today marked the final step of the Conservation of Fire workshop: conserving the coal and transporting fire from one place to another. We gathered in my backyard, made a fire in my bbq and then "stole" a coal to put into our mud pots. From there the trick was to see how to keep it alive inside the pot, burning slowly and smoking gently, feeding this "seed fire" occasionally. The other trick was to see how to carry the pot, which eventually gets quite hot. I made a carrier with my neighbour's vines that hang over our fence; others fashioned different ways. Once we had our fires going more or less, we started off on our walk to Dufferin Grove Park (about 20 mins away). Two of the five fires went out along the way, and then a third died in more spectacular fashion... At the Park we were able to start up another fire using one of the remaining "seeds", and there we stayed for a few hours, happily enjoying the Park and the fire and yes, some marshm...

"People did not know how to produce fire themselves. But it was produced in nature. So then that fire was like a gift, coming from the volcanoes, from the fire in the forest, coming from the fire in different places... But before it could be considered a 'gift' it was recognized as threatening and dangerous. Here is the first difference between hominids and other animals… All of them flee before fire, but the hominids move closer to the fire. That is something that marks a historical difference. Because in these guys' circuitry there is sufficient capacity to oppose their own reflexes. Nature says, 'escape'; but they go against this and say, 'move closer'…" - Silo, The Talk of 'The Stone' ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ A little less than a month after we made our mud pots, we arranged to fire them in a firepit in a nearby Park. We built up a small fire and put our pots around it so they would heat up very slowly, until the point when they...

Long before the human being could produce fire, they could only "steal" it, and then conserve it. This period of learning how to conserve fire before knowing how to make it lasted hundreds of thousands of  years, maybe even a million... We started our conservation of fire workshop this weekend with a trip to the Don River near Old Mill Station. There by the river's edge we dug up mud and proceeded to make little pots that we'll use later to conserve fire. The idea was to make a little mud "oven" with a hole towards the bottom for blowing in air, and a hole up top for the chimney.  Mixing in dried grass helped to keep the mud strong and flexible, and who knows what else got mixed in there along with it (geese and duck crap for sure).                                       Making Mudpots Now we'll let these dry for a good while and then the next st...