Glazing! Cont. from yesterday...

Ok. Now comes the glazing. I make all my own glazes from scratch. I have several buckets of different glazes. FIrstly, I have mix them up since things settle to the bottom while the buckets sit there on a shelf twixt glazings. I use a metal paint mixer on my drill.

Then I dip the waxed bisqueware into the glaze....

Now, you can see the glaze in a total mess on the bottom of the piece.

So, I wipe all that off after the glaze has dried a bit.

So, I glaze everything, taking great care to wipe off the excess glaze so it does not stick to my shelf and destroy the piece and my shelf.
Then I let the glaze dry. You can see where the wax was applied to the teeth and horns, nice and clean!

Then I load the kiln. I have a total of 9 shelves, but 2 live on the bottom, so they don't really count. I can usually sneak in a narrow shelf that I can load with tags and lids.


Voila! Three hours after I started glazing, the kiln is loaded and ready to fire...

Not everyone made into the firing. Because I can stack things inthe bisque firing, but not the galze fire, there is almost always someone left out. Good thing they are patient.

It will take about 8 hours to reach cone 10 then another 20 hours or so to cool down to where I can unload everything.