Heading to the dark side

Drill out! Whizzing up buckets of slaked crushed secondary kaolin and covering myself with it as well. It turns to slip pretty well after I fish out the larger stones. Then it all goes through at 60 mesh slip to remove the bits of limestone that are unfortunately part of the grit that's in it.
Then plenty of its own grog added, plus grit (mostly quartz with some mica chunks) from degraded granite, stiffened up on plaster batts and, after extensive kneading, it is ready for action.

I've been making a few different forms from it, including some larger composite pieces. It's not that plastic but OK to throw as long as I don't attempt anything over around 30cm.






Most of the pieces that I am making at the moment are starting from fairly simple forms like these.....

....and getting altered and cut once they have stiffened up.

You can see the iron in the body and fired in the wood kiln it tends to come out a dark burnt chocolatey colour with orange flecks where more protected. It is a great contrast to pale glazes as can be seen in this piece. It is also very good with a fluid type of Dartmoor granite glaze, where the iron bleeds out of the body into the glaze with quite spectacular results.