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Horsehair Workshop
September, 2002
We had a great time creating horsehair pottery using techniques taught to us by Linda and Charlie Riggs this summer. Everyone had a blast and got some great results.
Here
are some pictures, click on any for a larger image.
We brushed ferric chloride onto the burnished bisque ware.
Note that we are all wearing gloves, the banding wheels are covered with tin foil, and there is newspaper spread on the table.
Ferric chloride is quite nasty, and is extremely corrosive to metal. It is used as a printed circuit board etching solution.
We
took extreme care.
We placed the pots in one of our L&L electric kilns and raised the temperature to over a thousand degrees Fahrenheit.
We're not sure how good it is to open and close a kiln at this temperature, so we'll probably use a raku kiln and a pyrometer next time.
After
heating up our raku tongs and a soft brick, we turned off the kiln and removed a
pot with the tongs, placing it on the pre-heated brick.
It is very important to turn the kiln off. The metal tongs cannot touch the elements if they are turned on - it might be fatal.
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