Biggest blunders?

Hi guys!

You are being so quiet these days and I love to read from you - so starting
a topic I am pretty sure most of you will have input to!

What have been your biggest blunders? Either technical or practical - I
don't care - I just want to know what big mistakes you have made
(potterywise) and what you learned from them :-)

Mine up to now HAS to be making an oven dish with folded over handles, and
the handles made the dish too wide to go in the oven! Next dish is gonna
have handles straight up from the ends!

Marianne

Mine was having a blackboard with chalk in my workshop to make notes
about orders while we still had very young children. They had a chalk
fight while I was in a different part of the building, and a lot of
chalk wound up in the reclaim bin, which was open, and was pugged in
with the new batch of clay. I found out about it when bits started
blowing out of the sides, bottoms, etc. of my pots. I had to bury half a
ton (500Kgs) of contaminated clay and start again. This was at a time
when we hadn't long been in business so money was short.
Needless to say blackboards, chalk, AND plaster are not allowed within
500 feet of my workshop under any pretext what-so-ever!

Steve
Paranoid, in
Bath
UK


In article , Bubbles
writes
Hi guys!

You are being so quiet these days and I love to read from you - so starting
a topic I am pretty sure most of you will have input to!

What have been your biggest blunders? Either technical or practical - I
don't care - I just want to know what big mistakes you have made
(potterywise) and what you learned from them :-)

Mine up to now HAS to be making an oven dish with folded over handles, and
the handles made the dish too wide to go in the oven! Next dish is gonna
have handles straight up from the ends!

Marianne



--
Steve Mills
Bath
UK

"Steve Mills" wrote in message
...
Mine was having a blackboard with chalk in my workshop to make notes
about orders while we still had very young children. They had a chalk
fight while I was in a different part of the building, and a lot of
chalk wound up in the reclaim bin, which was open, and was pugged in
with the new batch of clay. I found out about it when bits started
blowing out of the sides, bottoms, etc. of my pots. I had to bury half a
ton (500Kgs) of contaminated clay and start again. This was at a time
when we hadn't long been in business so money was short.
Needless to say blackboards, chalk, AND plaster are not allowed within
500 feet of my workshop under any pretext what-so-ever!

Steve
Paranoid, in
Bath
UK

Oh my gosh!!!
I can't think of any thing like that. I made all the normal mistakes of the
beginner like lifting a dry green bowl by the rim (left holding rim only)
making HEAVY pots. One time I made a composite pot, very complicated,
upside down bowl, figures holding up another bowl, then underglazed it, had
dreams of a masterpiece ) Then lifting it into the kiln bumped into the
kiln shelf and the whole thing slowly fell apart in my hands. I jumped up
and down on it.
Oh well just wonder what my next big mistake will be.
Annemarie

While cleaning up the community studio, someone put a small bisqued pot into
the pug mill. Oops. We had to throw about 800lbs of recycled clay and
recovered about 30 dime sized pieces of bisquware. We reconstructed the
small pot as best we could and put it on display as a warning of what not to
do...

"annemarie" wrote in message
...

"Steve Mills" wrote in message
...
Mine was having a blackboard with chalk in my workshop to make notes
about orders while we still had very young children. They had a chalk
fight while I was in a different part of the building, and a lot of
chalk wound up in the reclaim bin, which was open, and was pugged in
with the new batch of clay. I found out about it when bits started
blowing out of the sides, bottoms, etc. of my pots. I had to bury half a
ton (500Kgs) of contaminated clay and start again. This was at a time
when we hadn't long been in business so money was short.
Needless to say blackboards, chalk, AND plaster are not allowed within
500 feet of my workshop under any pretext what-so-ever!

Steve
Paranoid, in
Bath
UK

Oh my gosh!!!
I can't think of any thing like that. I made all the normal mistakes of
the
beginner like lifting a dry green bowl by the rim (left holding rim only)
making HEAVY pots. One time I made a composite pot, very complicated,
upside down bowl, figures holding up another bowl, then underglazed it,
had
dreams of a masterpiece ) Then lifting it into the kiln bumped into the
kiln shelf and the whole thing slowly fell apart in my hands. I jumped up
and down on it.
Oh well just wonder what my next big mistake will be.
Annemarie

it has to be adding granite rocks to the kiln load to fill up all the open
areas for a glaze fire. you know how well a full kiln fires and all. i ran
out of pieces, and kiln posts.

rocks don't melt, right?



.....they melt.....


see ya

steve





Subject: Biggest blunders?
From: "Bubbles"
Date: 9/8/2004 12:26 PM Pacific Daylight Time
Message-id:

Hi guys!

You are being so quiet these days and I love to read from you - so starting
a topic I am pretty sure most of you will have input to!

What have been your biggest blunders? Either technical or practical - I
don't care - I just want to know what big mistakes you have made
(potterywise) and what you learned from them :-)

Mine up to now HAS to be making an oven dish with folded over handles, and
the handles made the dish too wide to go in the oven! Next dish is gonna
have handles straight up from the ends!

Marianne










steve graber

Two stories
1. I had packed my glaze kiln and put the top shelf in place however I
had not measured very well and the post wasn't quite as tall as one of
the pots I put in...which I didn't figure out until I unloaded and the
top of the pot was glazed to the underside of the shelf.
Lesson: Make sure the posts are tall enough for the pots.

2. I had already started a bisque fire and the kiln had been on for at
least two hours, I just wanted to add that last pot I had made. The
pot was rather dry, certainly not wet. I opened the kiln up and added
this new addition. About 15 minutes later I heard a loud poof...I
went down and the new addition had burst into a hundred pieces.
Lesson: Don't add pieces to a hot kiln.

"Jesse" wrote in message ...
While cleaning up the community studio, someone put a small bisqued pot into
the pug mill. Oops. We had to throw about 800lbs of recycled clay and
recovered about 30 dime sized pieces of bisquware. We reconstructed the
small pot as best we could and put it on display as a warning of what not to
do...

"annemarie" wrote in message
...

"Steve Mills" wrote in message
...
Mine was having a blackboard with chalk in my workshop to make notes
about orders while we still had very young children. They had a chalk
fight while I was in a different part of the building, and a lot of
chalk wound up in the reclaim bin, which was open, and was pugged in
with the new batch of clay. I found out about it when bits started
blowing out of the sides, bottoms, etc. of my pots. I had to bury half a
ton (500Kgs) of contaminated clay and start again. This was at a time
when we hadn't long been in business so money was short.
Needless to say blackboards, chalk, AND plaster are not allowed within
500 feet of my workshop under any pretext what-so-ever!

Steve
Paranoid, in
Bath
UK

Oh my gosh!!!
I can't think of any thing like that. I made all the normal mistakes of
the
beginner like lifting a dry green bowl by the rim (left holding rim only)
making HEAVY pots. One time I made a composite pot, very complicated,
upside down bowl, figures holding up another bowl, then underglazed it,
had
dreams of a masterpiece ) Then lifting it into the kiln bumped into the
kiln shelf and the whole thing slowly fell apart in my hands. I jumped up
and down on it.
Oh well just wonder what my next big mistake will be.
Annemarie

Bubbles wrote:
Hi guys!

You are being so quiet these days and I love to read from you - so starting
a topic I am pretty sure most of you will have input to!

What have been your biggest blunders? Either technical or practical - I
don't care - I just want to know what big mistakes you have made
(potterywise) and what you learned from them :-)

Mine up to now HAS to be making an oven dish with folded over handles, and
the handles made the dish too wide to go in the oven! Next dish is gonna
have handles straight up from the ends!

Years ago, while taking care of the studio at Bowie State University, i
was cleaning up the large table with buckets of glaze. What i didn't
realize at the time was, the table wasn't a table, it was a huge heavy
tabletop resting on two oildrums. I was pushing buckets from one side to
the other in order to wipe the surface underneath, when suddenly the
load was too heavy in the front and the entire tablatop with about 12
large buckets tipped over and crashed to the floor. (I was lucky i
didn't stand in front of it and got hit by the tabletop!) The mess was
beyond description!

Monika


--
Monika Schleidt

www.schleidt.org/mskeramik
(If you wish to send me a mail, please leave out the number after my name!)

(Slgraber) writes:

it has to be adding granite rocks to the kiln load to fill up all the open
areas for a glaze fire. you know how well a full kiln fires and all. i ran
out of pieces, and kiln posts.

rocks don't melt, right?

Many raku clays melt below cone 10, and you'd be surprised how many
pieces would end up on the wrong rack. That made a big enough mess
that the studio now uses the same clay base for raku.

--
Richard W Kaszeta

http://www.kaszeta.org/rich

Once a paraplexic asked me to fire some sculptures for him, from his own clay.
He told me it was porcelain, and although I had misgivings, I fired it in my
stoneware kiln. It was some lowfire kind of porcelain, for every shelf I put
the sculptures on, it congealed into the shelf. I was out a few shelves--he
was upset that I'd destroyed his sculptures. I'm very leary of firing other
people's work as a result.
Brad Sondahl
--
For original art, music, pottery, and literature, visit my homepage
http://sondahl.com

To reply to me directly, don't forget to take out the "garbage" from my
address.




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In article , the amazing
Bubbles says...
Hi guys!



What have been your biggest blunders? Either technical or practical - I
don't care - I just want to know what big mistakes you have made
(potterywise) and what you learned from them :-)

My blunder was when the tutor left me to choose a glaze and get on with it for the
first time.
Unknowingly and just going by the pretty colour, I chose a glaze that should only
be sponged on, or put on pieces that are horizontal. After carefully and
meticulously dipping, and then cleaning the bottom prior to going on the firing
shelf, another tutor spotted me just in time. When finding out the glaze and
telling me about it, the only way to salvage the piece was to wear a mask and
gently scrape it down as best as possible. He told me I had put it on so thick it
would have stuck to the shelf and caused all sorts of problems.
After the piece was fired it looked awful, exactly what I had done to it, all
scratchy, although my brother in law reckoned it was the "rustic" look!




--
He said, "It is finished." Not, "I am finished."