THE CRAFT OF FIRE

We've met a few more times to make our molds and copies, and in almost every case, to redo them. In some cases the silicone material wasn't mixed properly so it never hardened correctly, and therefore never cast correctly: In another case we're guessing that the silicone material was old and wasn't mixed properly so it never hardened correctly: In yet another case the (different) silicone material wasn't mixed properly so it never hardened correctly: And in one case the mold material worked out well but the mold's design wasn't good, so the little Venus emerged with a flat top : or the object used had too many openings in it and couldn't be cast well: But eventually (imagine!) we learn and get all the basics straight and produce a mold that works. Or should, once we meet up again and try it out...

Winter, with regular temperatures of -22°C, is a perfect time to find Craft activities that can be done indoors. For example, mold-making! While not dealing with fire or heat directly, learning to make molds out of silicone rubber and plaster will prepare us for later when we start casting material melted in our kilns and forges... So this past weekend a bunch of us got together to start. We looked for suitable objects to copy, using some of the old examples a few of us had created in the past, or else finding new ones. For this first session we used prefab mold kits to keep it simple.  Although we started working with a modern material (silicone rubber), the theme of originals, copies and molds is an ancient one: “You, Aruru, who created humanity, create now a copy of Gilgamesh, so that when these two meet they will fight between themselves and leave our city in peace.” The goddess Aruru, hearing this request, concentrated within hers...

What are the chances? We had an amazing ice storm here around Xmas time and there was incredible damage to all the trees in the city, including all around my neighbourhood. In fact, there were large (I mean, large) branches down on every block around our house, and many people had their power totally knocked out, some for over a week.       this foto by Ron Bulovs, Wikimedia Commons                                                      So of course as I walked the dog I gathered up particularly good pieces of wood (i.e. no larger than about 2-inches in diameter) from around the 'hood and brought them home and piled them up in the front yard, for eventual storage in the garage in the back – and eventual burning in the mud oven in the spring. Free firewood! I had quite a nice pile of wood in the front, and then one m...

What's a mud oven without a video to accompany it? Mud Oven 2013   Enjoy. Mud music by: Beethoven, the Muppets, Flanders and Swann and Bix Beiderbecke.

It works. And it's beautiful. Last weekend we finally fired up our mud oven, because we are essentially done, and because we couldn't wait any longer. And it was lovely. The air goes in, feeds the flames, and vents back out the front. No chimney required. Orsi and her kids came over, and Dani B. too, and with Sigrid they finished covering the oven with a thin layer of insulation (more to come). At least until the kids found worms in the mix, at which point they moved on to other things... Meanwhile I worked on the door - an old washboard I found on garbage day which happened to be exactly the width we needed. We really should have carved out the door before the oven mud dried so thoroughly. Getting it open to the right size (11.5" wide x 10" high) was not easy. Wetting and careful sawing did the trick. By the time it was all ready, it was dark, and the perfect s...

It's been a very busy week. Of waiting. For mud to dry.  And waiting a bit longer.   And doing some work.  And waiting some more.  And, while waiting, looking at the garden. (Still haven't gotten a photo of the garter snake that's made a home in the base of the oven.) And enjoying the waiting. Because things have a process. And you can't rush mud. And then doing a lot of work with the whole gang and being nearly, nearly done.  Here's Phil and Dani scooping out the sand while Danny and Orsi do some final patching of cracks.   Here we are mixing up some more insulating mix (sawdust, shavings, dried grass and mud). Here's Orsi adding some mortar to the base - we did a final layer of bricks along the top too. And here's Gloria preparing more mud for mixing. Here's the inside of the oven!  The paper shows where the sand form ended and where the mud-clay walls begin.  It's s...

We had another great session this past weekend, with a lot more mud-stomping and the dome of our oven finally taking shape! There it is, the sand mound, bird's eye view. The mud we mixed up last week needed re-hydrating, and this time we added a big bag of sand to it, to act like grog does - to help the clay-mud material resist cracking as it dries and heats up. And then once it was mixed and more or less ready to go, we left that to start building the sand dome. This is actually the empty space of the oven that we're forming, 16 inches high and about 22 inches in diameter. The sand gets covered with clay-mud, and later we'll scoop it all out - a "lost-sand process" - and be left with just an empty space within a clay-mud dome. Or in other words, a mud oven. It's fun to do a trick with your head and try to visualize the sculpting of negative space... (And this brings us close to another part of the Craft of Fire which is all about mold-making and ...