Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Primitive Skills => Topic started by: iowabow on June 11, 2012, 03:33:54 pm
-
I am starting an experiment with clay from the bottom of flint creek here in Burlington Ia. I am tempering the clay with clam shells from the creek. I plan on pit firing the work. I separated the small rocks by liquefying the clay and pouring off the top leaving the stone and large sand particles. I am crushing the shell to a powder and adding it to the mix. If any of you habe done this i would like you input about your results.
-
I have done a lot of pot hunting in years past.
Here is a shell tempered Mississippian era ladle to give you an idea of how much crushed shell to put in your clay. Not the clearest picture but you can see the shell.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v181/ekrewson/shelltemperedladle.jpg)
-
Can you post more pic of stuff you found. I am not sure what form i am going to make. Do you have a site you like to look at on the web.
-
Good thread! I've been finding a lot of clay beds in the inter-coastal waterway, lately. Probably decayed mangroves areas that come and go in the passes. What would be a good plan for trying to make a pit-fired pot out of mangrove clay? Do I smash shells and add it to it? I'd be interested in trying my hand at it...
-
Hey i cant tell the scale of the particles without a ruler. Couple of pictures.
-
The shell particles are small, 1/16th" a smaller, the shell is Tennessee River mussel shell. The ladle was washed out of the banks of the Tennessee River between Stevenson and Bridgeport Al. I found it in the seventies before picking up such stuff was illegal. As you can see, it was made in the form of a breast which I found a bit unusual.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v181/ekrewson/shelltemperedpotteryruler.jpg)
-
The clay was perfect today. So made a simple pot. Later this week I am going to fire this in a pit.
-
that pot looks great. really looking forward to the after firing pic too!
-
I have read a lot about different firing but would really like to hear about how others have fired their work.
-
that pot looks great. really looking forward to the after firing pic too!
Thanks the marks on the pot have meanings . There are 12 full moons above fields of grass and a creek that runs below. I kept it simple for the first try.
-
That's wonderful stuff, John, I love it.
How about a simple primer on pit firing for those of us thinking of making the jump?
-
Sure jw, I will do a play by play.
-
I put two shell halves or 1 medium clam/mussle in to the clay of the pot seen above. I plan to let the pot dry real good before putting it to the fire. Also I plan to heat treat flint below the pot so that two processes can be preformed at one time.
-
That is sweet John,very nice work,you are sure staying busy while you are off. :) :) :)
Pappy
-
John, that is really some cool stuff. Can't wait to see your results.
-
Thanks all for the positive input and all. Update for you the pot has air dried and is being sun baked this afternoon to drive off as much water as possible. Then i will let it sit for another day just for good measure. I want the ware to be bone dry. Any moisture in the pot at 212 will blow. If the pot breaks during firing we will still have results to evaluate. With the store bought clay i had a bout a 20 % breakage rate so I figure the rate should be higher like 50%. I already have the next batch of clay ready to fire.
-
8) cool thread John and nice pot too. dp
-
It is hard to find a good window of opportunity to do the firing. Wednesday is going to be too windy with gusts up to 30 miles per hour. Thursday we have a heat warning with high winds as well. We have thunderstorms forecast for the weekend so monday is now my new target. I am anxious to start the firing but know better than risk the chance of cool air on a hot pot from gust or water from a down pour. So as hard as it is to wait i am fillin the time with other primitive projects. I have finish to put on three bows, cane arrows to shave on, and flint knapping for hunting points i am making for people. A calm day is what is needed so I wait.
-
Might be a window 1am Friday morning till late afternoon. You might wonder why I want to fire during this window. The reason to take the risk is because the ground will be dry. If I wait till Monday I have a hole that is conducting cold easier due to higher moisture.
-
Can't you throw a tarp over it or a buffalo rug or something? Man I hope that rain makes it this far East. It is dry dry dry here. Last big rain was on May 8th. dp
-
Quick pack it up and send it to me! I'll put it out in the Black Hills and the forest fires will fire it for you!
We'll just have to trust and hope a fire crew doesn't step on it!
-
I recently did some native potting from some local creek clay. It fired fine for me. I took my time easing it into the heat was all. Set it beside the fire and turned it and moved it slowly closer til i couldn't hardly touch it before actually throwing it into the fire and burying it.
Worked out good.
Will see if I can get some photos some time soon.
N2
-
The winds should die by 6 pm. We have 20% chance of rain so i am going to go for it so stay tuned for pictures to night.
-
Just saw an article about pottery like this in the Backwoodsman. John, you could write a much better article and judging by the number of people reading this thread it would be a very popular article in P.A. Think it over!
-
Just saw an article about pottery like this in the Backwoodsman. John, you could write a much better article and judging by the number of people reading this thread it would be a very popular article in P.A. Think it over!
I think i will but make it more detailed with source material and historical ref. This thime is just a stress test and temp test.
Ok fire lighted at 7am. 4 minutes later i hear thunder
So i am considering options....
-
Ok i have 15 min before rain so here is the plan lots of large sticks leaves and then dirt as a shelter
-
I am running to get a shelter together but need to record firing time725am
-
Built just in time
-
15 min later still good and rain letting up
-
We are around the 1000 degree mark so it will be interesting to see what we reach. I would be very concerned that the temp went too high too quick. But we will see. I have to start some where.
-
I would like to get past 1065 "quartz inversion"
-
When we hit 1065 so i am happy
-
Well i rearanged the fire by pulling the coals back to black then let them ignite. And built a fire 6 inches above the coals and this brought the temp from 850 to 1000 very fast.
-
So see the gap in the burning wood and coals. What you are doing with the first half of firing is making charcoal the second half you burn it for a hotter fire. Yes you are seeing bow wood and a lot of it hehe. It is not the good stuff.
-
:)
-
We hit 1027
-
This is great! Love this thread! 8)
-
Going to let the fire die now 911am
-
Hmmmm 911 not good numbers...
Anyway a couple notes: I called the fire department before hand to make sure there was not a burn ban in effect. Also I was sure to drink lots of water during the burn. With hot weather and high heat you can have issues. The last thing you want is to pass out into your fire. This fire will burn for many hours and should produce a product that will tell us something about the clay the shell and the temp we used. We dont need an unbroken pot to gather tons of information.
I used bark and ashes to slow the heating of our pot but another option could be broken pottery. This we do not have yet. So if it breaks we will use it to prevent the next one from breaking. I hope the pot makes it but if not we will do it again in a couple of weeks.
-
Only thing I see your missing is a BBQ smoker with a side fire box. You could be smoking some awesome pork alone with the pots. :P Can't wait to see how it all turns out.
-
This is great! Love this thread! 8)
Just like a bunch of kids lol but we dont get in trouble when the parents come home. Kids dont even try this at home without a parent!!!!! Really the fire can light the grass on fire. I watered the ground real good and it rained.
-
Really cool thread, John. The anticipation is killing me....
-
Well the sun's out and we been going at this drop for just about an hour or so and we've only got about a 50 degrees drop and that is what we want. Time 10:03am
-
Here are a couple pictures of the set up. The temp probe was placed below the fire but was not heat sheilded and may account for the rapid rise in the temp data. I am hoping that the pot did not come to temp at fast. Also there is a smaller pot without shell as a small test. It had a small crack already that occuried during the drying.
-
I am glad you guys are following this real time it is more fun that way. Well we have an hour before we need to record the temp again so i think i will go check the deer cam but first i need to water the grass around the fire.
-
this is sooo exciting. have wanted to do something like this for sometime.
but have absolutely no know-how...
have picked up so many pieces of pottery over the years in northern missouri that are local clay with lots of shell showing.
it has fascinated me for yrs....
thanks for taking us thru this!!
-
Please remember this is just a test and most likely we will have a pot with a crack but that will be goodbrcause it will explain why we do X. Anyway you are welcome I am having fun. So the temp is at 900 which is great. Looks like a drop of 50 per hour . If the rate increases i will put dirt on top to hold in heat.
-
Dang I'm glad I'm @ work w/ the high speed intranet. Lovin the play by play too John. dp
-
We at at 868 so dropping even slower that is good!
-
8)
-
865 very slow drop
-
775 is where we are now.
So our careful drop is going way slower than 50 per hour. Interesting data to be sure. This means that there is a lot of heat work taking place after stopping. Now the cone or heat work is different than degrees. What that means is that the longer an object is exposed to heat the more it will change that object. So if you put your hand over a fire then remove it fast there will be no heat work but leave it over a flame for a long time you will have hand steak. So although we only reached 1100 which is cone 22 we most likely hit cone 19 because it stayed so high for so long. Now with that said the very very slow drop is making movement in the clay safe because it is occurring very slowly. Based on this there should be no breakage due to rapid cooling. So if the pot is broken it would be safe to guess that rapid heating was the culprit.
Conclussions at this point:
The fire pit was shallow so as to reflect early types of firing and temps were low. To make a pot more durable long heat holds had to take place. Also fire tending was a must to maintain a temp above 1000 degree. My best guess would be a hold of six hours.
-
An hour later an we are at 771.
-
OK now i have some cool ideas this is clay from the pit. One is fired the other is not. The pot is made from different colored clay. I think i can decorate with a watered down clay (slip) and make orange lines and forms..
-
With the fire not dropping i am getting worried about hot spots with other areas cold. I decided to tuck in the fill on top to cut off oxygen.
-
:)
-
At 553pm annette brings freezer pop
-
Now we are dropping 744 which is 20 degrees in 30
Mins. So that might be 40 per hour.
-
Thunder and that means rain in 15 mins this time the plan is to shelter with leaves.
-
Well things could not be more interesting with thunder storm on its way. Isaac and I have created a leaf shingle to go over the top of our fire. We are going to wait until the rain starts and assemble our leaf shingles so it doesn't dry out before the rain comes.
-
>:(
-
You're a WILD MAN John!!! ;D 8) ;Ddp
-
Winds have picked up and the roof is on.
-
Two things are happening; Rain and high wind both will kill this project. Both are being taken care of by the leaf covering. The temp is at 635. So the drop is 60/hr
-
Here it comes kids
-
I think that baby is just going to miss me lol that was close. That storm is in the valley two fields north. I am watching them one the phone and they appear anf disappear fast.
-
Not one drop yet
-
8:40 and we are at 555 so maybe 69 degrees/hr
-
Should be able to uncover the pots around 12 midnight so i am setting the alarm. You might ask why wait till morning well we have more storms coming. I want to pull them before it rains on the pile.
-
you coulda used kale and had a little snack while waiting for the rain. Boy I hope we get some of that weather here @ my place. I'll check back in the a.m. two thumbs up john, dp
-
Well it is 12:30 and it is at 500 degrees so back to bed till morning.
-
Crazy thing happened the fire relit and was at 650. So i knew that was bad. But when i uncovered the pots i was very happy. I opened the pit because a storm was coming it.
-
This one was fine
-
So the high heat was at the most likely shocked this pot the other piece must have been better protected. The restart could also have caused unequal heating. My best guess initially is that heat at the start would crack the pot not pot lid the surface. However i can produce the surface
with a propane torch on un-fired pottery. So a very hot flame licked the side of this pot as the fire was lit. Most likely in that first five minutes.
Result # 2
This pot is not cracked at all even with the pot lid surface wow! It has a great ringing sound when struck to it indicating that we had enough heat to do the work we wanted.
Result # 3 the area that is pot lidded has same coloration therefore the same carbon up take. This would also indicate that it occurredearlier in the firing and during a time of reduction.
Results#4 the lip is the most delicate part of the pot and should have been placed down.
Result# 5 shell particles look simular in quantity to the photo provided earlier in this post
-
Happy to see so many good things with two pots in one firing.
:)
-
Cool John! Man you are on it with all the firing terminology and understanding and explanation. :o can't wait for the next one. Did you heat some rock too? dp
-
Very cool! You keep practicing cause I'm trying to talk Shell into lettin me commission you for a center piece for our dining room. :laugh: (She may want modern ceramics, though.)
-
Sweet!
-
John: This was a cool post to follow. Looking forward to the next one. Incidently, Dylan sends a "hello" to Isaac.
-
Isaac says hi back and looking forward to shooting bows together again. should able to fire again next week if the weather cooperates