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Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 1h

Crystals! Sweet

Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 12h

And we were on Maine Street in Brunswick!

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Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 17h

A costume, some signs, and a t-shirt from earlier today, brought to you by citizens who love their country

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Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 3d

Started building a holzhausen on top of four pallets with overflow hardwood, mostly oak, maple and cherry
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There's still some room under the wood storage roof for pine or other soft wood
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PSA: No Kings (or Nazis) this Saturday (or ever)
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#pottersofbluesky #ceramics #pottery #woodfire

A hollow, half-built circular woodpile--a holzhausen, or beehive stack--made from split logs of oak, maple, black cherry and a little yellow and paper birch, sitting on top of wooden pallets and concrete blocks. Currently about four feet high. The inside will be filled with wood, and the outer wall will move inward, like the top of a beehive, from this point on. Final dimensions will be some seven feet in diameter and the same in height

The inside of the holzhausen, to be filled with more split hardwood

Split wood under roof for next year's firings. Softwood (pine, spruce, hemlock) on the left, hardwood (oak, maple, cherry, beech, birch) on the right. There's room on the left for some more pine still to be split. Because I burn half hard, half soft, I try to keep one side exclusively for each. Hard for the heat, soft for the ash

Two piles of logs still to be split. Pine in the foreground, mostly maple behind

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Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 6d

Maple, pine, oak, and more maple
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Wood processing for the kiln occupies me for several weeks in autumn
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It will be placed under roof to dry over the winter, to be ready for firing in May
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Oh yeah
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FDT
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#pottersofbluesky #ceramics #pottery #woodfire #anagama #noborigama

Maybe a face cord of white pine rounds from three dead trees I felled and bucked yesterday

A cord of red oak. Broke down and bought it

Another cord of silver maple bolts and rounds, waiting to be split

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Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 7d

Holy Hen, Batman, this one's so immaculate it's glowing
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Does anyone else find it hilarious that the Regime is jealous that another right-winger in a different authoritarian"shit hole" country won the Nobel Peace Prize?
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#henofthewoods #mushrooms #wildmushrooms
#rambleinthebramble

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Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 10d

WOW!

Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 11d

Thanks, Liz!

Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 12d

Thanks, Bill. I had a few other pieces I glazed with oribe and refired. One or two came out well, like this one. The rest were a mottled matte pink and green--too much of a reduced atmosphere for oribe. I'll heat those up again in an electric kiln, to turn them the right color!

Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 12d

An oribe refire
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It was slip and shino on the exterior, the first time through the flame
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And FDT for trying to create the very conditions for which he might invoke the Insurrection Act
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What mirth there must be in Zhongnanhai and the Kremlin
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#pottersofbluesky #ceramics #pottery #woodfire

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Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 12d

Thanks, Bill. It was the color of concrete before the second firing!

Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 12d

A handsome mug and the kiln it was twice fired in
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Oh yeah
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And FDT for being such an irredeemable fuckwad, and double that for all his enablers, psychopaths every last one, for making so many lives worse and for what
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#pottersofbluesky #ceramics #pottery #woodfire #anagama #noborigama

One side of a darkly-slipped mug lined with gold shino. Standard 182 white stoneware body. Some gold shino sprayed over the spots on the outside that were too dry the first time through the flame

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Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 13d

Wow, looks almost like snowflake/fishscale celadon

Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 13d

All this bullshit about ANTIFA from the right has me ready to puke. There is no ANTIFA, just people. They really think they can convince Americans to turn on each other. It's like the oligarchs think they can manipulate the masses, through MAGA. MAGA is ⅓, at most. There will be a reckoning

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Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 13d

Perhaps, but some are more winnery than others 😉

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Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 13d

Thanks, Bill. We got good results. Might have soaked at peak for a bit longer to melt a little more, but def not complaining. Next time we fire the soda chamber by itself, I'll preheat with a propane burner or build a fire in the chimney. Want to get it down to 27-30 hours. A full 36 is too tiring

Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 14d

More than a few winners visible in there
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#pottersofbluesky #ceramics #pottery #woodfire #anagama #noborigama

Front stack of the soda/second/noborigama chamber

Back stack of the soda/second/noborigama chamber

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Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 16d

Keep ranting, Ben . . . right into the ears of your rep and sens, esp

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Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 17d

Waiting for the kiln to cool
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So here's a trawler coming about in the Kennebec at the mouth of the Winnegance in front of Maine Maritime near sunset
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Calming, unlike the regime's fascistic distractions

Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 17d

A little foraging story in pictures
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#mushrooms #wildmushrooms #maitake #henofthewoods #grifolafrondosa

Two nice hens at the base of an ancient fallen red oak. I found them five days before harvesting them, when they were still quite small, and hid them under a very large piece of bark that had already peeled off the trunk--not to keep them out of the pieholes of other foragers, but to keep them from being munched by deer

Two kilos of cleaned hens in a large porcelain bowl. It didn't take long to process them, as I got to the mushies before the roly-poly bugs

That's not to say there weren't other smol critters needing encouragement to find new homes

Cooked mushroom pickles in a large pot--enough for gifting once canned and to last my wife and me through the year

I used forager chef Alan Bergo's recipe, to which I added cilantro and various hot peppers for more of a kick

Pepper varieties visible in the photo: red and yellow Ho Chi Minhs, a green serrano, and the only ghost pepper I managed to grow this year, having planted a little late

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Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 18d

Réduction much?
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Second day after mudding up
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You can still feel the heat standing a meter away
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#pottersofbluesky #ceramics #pottery #woodfire #anagama #noborigama

Soot-blackened kiln chimney with three soot-blackened plates resting on a ledge above the chimney's active damper and bracing made from angle iron and all-thread. The incomplete combustion coming from flame licking out of the passive damper, now closed with brick and mudded newspaper, was the soot source

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Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 19d

Probably right. There's a big mass of brick that needs hotting up, and it's hard to do with a smallish firebox. Cone 6? Oof. Thankfully, we were able to throw soda boardsinto the firebox between ∆10 and ∆11

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Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 19d

When we fire the chambers together, anagama and noborigama, the n. chamber is easy, due to all of the waste heat from the a. chamber. When the a. chamber is at temp, it only takes a few hours to fire off the n. Only being able to stoke through the narrow sides of the n. chamber firebox is the issue

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Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 19d

Fired 37 hours, burnt four cords of wood
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Hard to ramp, using just the side stokes--too slow, but we got where we wanted to go
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Next time we load just the 2d/soda chamber, I'll build a campfire in the chimney or preheat with a propane tank
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#pottersofbluesky #ceramics #pottery #woodfire

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Clay Flambé @cleanmuddauber.bsky.social · 20d

Thanks. With any luck, at least one will fit each vessel