Moo Juice Give Away and Lesson on Casting Greenware

Never know what one may find though blog world. I was cruising though some comments left for Dog Days of Summer Bloggy give away and I saw a give away that Horizon Organic is giving away some great product and for more information you need to check out 5 Minutes for Mom horizon organic contest

I been doing all sort of phase of cast ceramics and I like to share my knowledge on how to cast ceramics.

One thing is a tool that one may use in pouring ceramic molds. A Pitcher, which holds slip clay Honest time…I do have a pump on my pour tank but my motor is not working and I have anther one to put on it but haven’t had the chance to
Timer to keep track of time ceramics should be cast at about eighth of inch thick but things like Christmas ornament would be thinner because you want them light so they won’t pull over your tree.
Containers to hold water or clay
Brush to smooth out inaccuracy. Knowledge time…all most has it own personality and there are stress point in all molds and one part of mold may want to hold on and other part may let go earlier
Rubber Specula to sometime light pry or clean molds.
Fettling knife is to trim way excess clay.
Hydrometer is to measure the specify gravity of your slip

And a air compressor to clean molds but also to pry molds apart and also to pop out greenware out of the molds

When pouring ceramics it should be at slow and steady pace. If poured to quickly it will have splatter spots on your greenware.
It is best to someone pour in slow motion of movement or you could possible end up with lumps.

When pour excess slip out of the molds it best to slow dump the mold over and lay in on it side and let it run out natural.
Then once the mold pretty well stops pouring excess slip.

One may dump it over and let it drain into the slip tank. Sometime if you think your mold haven’t drain completely one may shacked or tap on top of the mold.

Now you let the greenware set up and this will vary with weather condition. Generally I pour in the morning and the evening I pull greenware

Then once the greenware is starting to shrink from the mold then you may start to pull it from the mold

Before you pull you trim away the pour spout of the mold with a fettling knife. And the excess greenware I recycle back in

Sometime the greenware may not want to come loose from the mold and air from the air compressor may need to be applied. But also I’ve gentle tap the side of the mold with my hands.

This is a table of cast greenware. There a scarecrow that I have sitting in a mold which at this time isn’t ready to come out. And it should be ready Saturday morning to be pulled.
Then I’ll start to clean the greenware and get ready to fire it in the kiln.

My camera person Bart left and I don’t have a picture of how to clean a mold after it is cast. But don’t worry I will soon show you how to clean a mold.