I suppose I’ve been somewhat fascinated by these lions after reading an interesting story a decade ago about the theft of 50 of these from a fifteen story 1928 Art Deco building in Detroit that had been abandoned. Now I’m toying with the idea of making a model of one. The building, known as The Lee Plaza is on the historic register. The building closed in the late 1990s and the ground floor openings were bricked up with concrete blocks to keep vandals out, but the concrete blocks didn’t last long and soon the vandals and the scrappers made their way in and destroyed the interior, ripped out the wiring…

Oops, guess that panel didn’t work well, it was completely destroyed, turned out it was the raku clay and all the other models that had been fired were a different clay. The raku clay should have been better that the other clay since it’s designed for rapid heating and cooling. Oh well, no real loss since I have a mold of it, but it was a surprise it had started cracking and breaking before the kiln was even 700 degrees.

A couple of more models came out of the kiln this morning, the own center and the Nortown Theater Art Deco panel Nr D7. D7 weighs 38# and it was somewhat of a surprise that the panel weighs pretty much what it weighed before going into the kiln, I had thought the process would continue to burn out materials, the chemically combined water, and that a percentage of the weight would be lost as a result, that seems not to be the case though it may have lost a very small amount of weight the scale wasn’t accurate enough to register, on the order of less than a pound. That…

After several more loads, I now have several of my original sculptures preserved in the hard terracotta state. Other than some minor warpage of the JMCCO monogram panel due to it’s tipping forward at an angle in the kiln during the firing process, all the other pieces turned out completely free of any cracks or other issues. Here are some photos of the now fired sculptures, all but one was modelled in Continental Clay’s raku clay which can be fired up to cone 10, I fired all of these to cone 1 except the angel panel. The thing is, I never actually intended to kiln fire any of these models…

Ok, firing #2 went fine, nothing cracked or exploded 🙂 There was one issue with the monogram panel however, I had it in the kiln on edge resting on 3 posts, but at some point during the firing it tipped forward and leaned one top corner against the brick, as it only had about an inch and a half space it didn’t tip very far, but apparantly it was enough to cause it to warp a little across the opposite corner which was not touching the brick. It’s not a real big deal but I wasn’t thrilled with the warp. The photo compares the color of the same clay- angel…

Now for the 2nd load in the kiln, I was able to fit the 621 male keystone and the monogram plaque. This time I decided to take it to cone 1 @ 2079 degrees which should give the red clay of the monogram a very nice darker and richer red color. I won’t know untill to-morrow night how they turn out as it will take at least 10-12 hours to cool down enough to open the lid.

The moment of truth was last night, after connecting up the vent I placed my angel model in the kiln on end, it had barely 1/2″ of space between it and the underside of the lid, so it just fit! I used the pre-programmed slow bisque setting and let it run. About 13 hours and 16 minutes later it reached cone 05 as set to, and shut off. I decided to go and check on it to make sure I had set it right and it worked properly, so I went over at about 5 AM and it had shut off about 40 minutes earlier and had cooled down to…

I finally have the kiln wired in, I ran into a couple of issues that required re-doing the conduit to 3/4″, changing a 90 degree fitting to a different type, and then having to get larger wire. The pain was the owner’s manual that came with the kiln, and their web site price list/installation PDF for this kiln states that it takes #10 wire and a 40 amp breaker which is totally wrong. I did the math, 6300 watts / 240 volts is 26.25 amps which is what’s on the name plate, and #10 wire’s max ampacity is 30, and using .80 for the safety margin to avoid nuissance trips…

My Olympic kiln was delivered the other day, I was real impressed with everything about the shipment and kiln, it was well packed, and strapped securely to a new wood pallet. It came with everything one could need! opening the three cardboard boxes in the shipment, there was the vent kit with everything included- clamps, hoses, colelctor cup, extension legs, instructions, even a drill bit was included to drill holes with (though the kiln had them already predrilled for the vent system) The other boxes included the shelves, stilts and posts, an extra set of upper and lower elements, bag of element pins, kiln wash, kiln mortar, a box of…

I have the model finished, except for the final cleanup, straightening and sharpening edges etc. There really isn’t a way to have the letters go under and over each other like this without “bending” to do it, or else make the letters extremely deep or “stepped” rather than bending, but they are already about 1/2″ high. I had initially thought it might work but raising one letter much higher to make it flatter and then to go over another lower letter next to it without “bending” down to do it doesn’t work, so as it dries and firms up a bit more this weekend I’ll be tidying up the surfaces…