Coil Vase pt 6

Not too much happening with the vase lately. It's simply drying and awaiting firing. But while it's drying I have to important job of smoothing it out even more. It is at the perfect stage for a good sanding, let me rephrase that HAND sanding...There's really not too much to explain about it. Anyone who has done any sort of sanding before knows it's basically just a lot of rubbing back and forth.

But there is ONE thing to keep in mind while sanding a green ware vase, strokes are up and down, not random.


I made some initial marks here to show the color the vase will turn after sanding, a light gray. You can also see that even after carving away the larger lumps it's still not even close to being really smooth.











Here is the vase close up after a good sanding. See all the dust on the bottom? It's amazing how much came off actually. Next time I'm for sure wearing a mask and some eye ware. Inhaling this can't be healthy and I accidentally touched one of my eyes and it was irritated and itchy for a few hours after.

The initial sanding is with a lower grade paper (larger grain) once I have finished that I will use a higher grain paper to get a nice unscratched finished.










After about 45 min of sanding and a sore arm and shoulder later I decided to call it a day with sanding. I barely made it past the base, I still have about 2/3 of the vase to sand. Sanding isn't something that has to be rushed so I can slowly keep at it until it goes into the kiln. (Roughly 6 weeks to get the sanding done) Which is great since I was sore the next morning from using muscles in my arm I never usually use haha.














First firing







before second firing









awaiting third firing





On another note here is an older vase I made awhile back. The original color (top pic) is from the noborigama, not so great, would've liked more glaze runnage. The pink color was a second visit to the kiln with glaze X, but it didn't turn out well at all, (Sorry no picture) now far right picture is the vase again getting ready for it's third trip to the kiln. I hope the third times the charm. Glaze is Kohagi (bottom pic) Firing a pieces so many times isn't always a good idea, it could warp or break or look even worse than before. But I absolutely didn't like the vase after glaze X so I'm willing to take the risk.

Until next time!