Now I have the size for the clay model calculated out to allow for the moist to dry shrinkage of the clay model (5%) plus the eventual 10% shrinkage involved with the hand-pressed clay version with it’s drying and kiln firing. Added to these two factors is an additional amount to make the resulting fired clay pressing close to the fired size of the Nortown D5 panel- 18-3/4″ x 12-3/4″ With that calculated out and plotted out on paper I have both my full scale reference print-out and the box-form required to start the model after a little more prep-work. I’ll be making one section of the repeated design, making…

Now I have the 3rd fired panel out of the kiln, I had lowered the final temperature 10º to 2050º and the end “hold” time from 10 minutes to 5 minutes. Also, I placed several kiln posts on the floor of the kiln so the panel could set on top of them on end and be raised about 1″ off the kiln floor and still allow the kiln lid to close. It looks like this solved both issues I had, one was the red color I wanted had started turning towards the more brown spectrum for this clay at the 2060-2079º temperatures, so lowering the temperature to 2050 solved that,…