Test Fire

Most days I play a supporting role to the lonely potter's lead, at least as far as pottery goes. I do try to keep informed about pottery in general and aware of what is happening in the studio so that I can try  to stay out of the way or get involved, depending on what would work best for the lonely potter, the pottery, and me.  Sometimes, though, I almost miss my cue.

One Sunday, a couple of weeks ago, the lonely potter asked me to take the bar-b-q propane tank to get filled. So, I did, thinking that he must be planning on a special bar-b-q treat. When I came back to the house with the newly filled and heavy tank, the lonely potter was no where to be seen. Neither were any steaks or other possible bar-b-q fare. I was about to try to carry the tank to the bar-b-q, hook it up, and look for something to thaw for supper, grumbling all the way, when the  lonely potter showed up, grabbed the tank, and disappeared towards the pottery studio. Apparently we were not having a bar-b-q.

It wasn't difficult to figure out what was going on. There had been some intense pottery glazing over the previous days, and lots of to-ing and fro-ing between the pottery studio and the firing shed where the sawdust and raku kilns had been set up.  And it was Sunday. For some reason the lonely potter likes to do his raku firing on Sundays, although it really doesn't matter what day of the week it is to him for anything else.
After I had supper organized,the dogs and I trooped out to see how the first outdoor firing since moving here was going.

The lonely potter was not happy. The raku kiln was not getting hot enough, and if he opened up the tiger torch he used to heat the kin any more, the propane tank would freeze. This is a phenomenon we have seen a few times, usually when the propane gets low and the firing is getting slow, despite attempts to get maximum flame from the torch. When you see frost on the outside of the propane tank and it's a warm summer day, you know there is a problem. Not seeing any point in watching while the lonely potter became more and more frustrated, the dogs and I headed back to the house to get food and drink ready for what looked like would be a long afternoon and night. Then I saw the black clouds. And then the wind came up.

So we spent a lovely Sunday evening, complete with thunder, lightening and sudden downpours, with me mostly in the kitchen  and the lonely potter in the firing shed, tryng to ignore the weather. I tried to keep the lonely potter's spirits up with hot food and coffee and a special dessert, and he tried to get some new and interesting results out of the kilns, using things like horse hair, leaves, and other things he had read about but never tried before.

The results, according to the lonely potter, were terrible. I, on the other hand, with no preconceived ideas about what things were supposed to look like  thought it was all pretty good. Anyway, it was just  a test.