: Kabe - Viewing Profile

Technical Question; I am making a 32 by 6 inch deep bowl for a friend of mine to use as a mold to melt glass into. It is for a church baptismal. I have already made the plaster mold for the clay and have shaped the clay into it. When I flipped it the wieght of the mold distorted the clay. ( 100+ lb of plaster and about 120 lbs of clay is a lot to flip) I remade to bowl,so now I can make another plaster cast to go over the top to hold everything in place when I flip the mold but I was wondering what anyones thought were on how thick I should go with the clay. All the work I have done so far is to get to where I can form the final bowl, I was going to go about 1 to 1 1/4 thick and reinforce the underside of the clay mold with clay spokes on the underside of the bowl. Really it will just be a big biscuit bowl. He will put a sheet of glass on top of it and melt if into the cavity. The clay will be fired to about 1800 (Biscuit) to start with and then I think he will fire the glass to around 1000 to slump it. I am not sure of the exact temp. The clay I am using is my heavily groged tile clay body. It matures at cone 6. It seldom warps. Cracking could be a problem when I first fire it and dry it. Hope not. I will let it dry and fire on a bed of grog. Question; how thick would you recommend the clay to be? I do not want to wait forever for it to dry and also do not want it to be so heavy that it takes a fork truck to move it. Happy firing Kabe

I don't suspect this is really a valid topic. It's more of a grandpa practicing the art of doting. This is my granddaughters first time on a wheel. It took three bricks to get her feet to the right level. Two for the left and one under the pedal. I posted a picture of her first bowls in my gallery. She is nine. She gave the bowls to her teacher on the last day of school. She didn't think her teacher would mind the slight s crack in the bottom. She's good and a fast learner. It took me a long time to make what I wanted on a wheel, while she was able to do it her first attempt. When her pot looked sort of like a volcano she stopped and said "That's what I wanted to make. A volcano." The volcanos are still drying so they won't explode like one when I fire them. I think of them more as low gravity candelabras. We ended up with two volcanos, Two large bowls and two smaller bowls. The picture in my gallery are the large and small of it. I think she did pretty good for her first try. Pardon my doting. Ain't clay fun!