Bird House Class Starts
The first house we'll be making in class.
Today I start teaching my bird house class at NC State’s Craft Center. In preparation I made my first house of the year as a demonstration piece. To improve the success of the students results I’ve made a few changes. There were warping problems last year because we were using a throwing body instead of sculpture body so this year we’ll be using Highwater Clay’s Craggy Crunch instead of their Orangestone, which is a great clay for throwing and basic hand building. Craggy has much more grog which will make the clay shrink less(9.5 % shrinkage compared to Orangestone’s 11%) as well as help the slabs warp less. Also, I’m going to have them make a tile on which to glaze fire their finished house. So when the house is shrinking in the kiln the vunerable edges on the house’s bottom won’t drag across the shelf, instead the tile will drag and hopefully the house will shrink smoothly with the tile as it shrinks.
One new design feature I add was to put a convex curve into the top of the house floor to make any water that might accumulate fall out the corners of the house. There are drainage holes as well.
Here are some pics of the bottom being made.
Nice!!! That looks great. Good modifications. They’ll love it. Such fun!
I’m looking forward to it!!!