How to bake clay

Firing pottery – finishing and at the same time almost the most important stage of processing. How you cope with the task, the fruit of your works will crumble to dust, or will delight for years to come.

You will need

Muffle furnace, tin cans, bricks, firewood

Instruction

Dry the product before you burn it. To do this, leave at room temperature in a shaded place, away from heaters and drafts – to avoid temperature fluctuations. After seven days you can complete the drying process in the oven the oven – leaving the door ajar, gradually increase the temperature to 200 degrees for two hours.

Ideally, the firing of clay must be carried out in a muffle furnace. Such furnaces can be of various sizes, including compact, comfortable sleeping even in the room. Small electric furnace it is possible to use not characterized by the spaciousness of the workshops. To burn the product in a furnace, increase the temperature by 200-300 degrees every 4-5 hours. When the maximum temperature is 1000 degrees , start to gradually reduce it. Remove the hack only after it has cooled completely. The time and temperature of roasting may vary depending on the type of clay and size of the object.

If the product is small and it is not afraid to mess up, you can experiment and try to burn it on an open fire. Take two tin cans of different sizes. With an awl make a few holes. Place the clay object in one of them, put on top of the second. Place the jar with the product on a small brickwork and lay around the fire so that the volume of firewood was about the same. Abrogate the product by adding the logs. When the fire burned and the coals cooled, you can get crafts.

Note

Keep clay objects while in the furnace, not in contact with its walls and with each other.

Useful advice

If you are not able to purchase a kiln, contact shops – for a modest fee they can burn the product in their working furnaces.

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