So I've been pit firing pottery (no kiln) with varying success. Sometimes they come out with a really nice marble effect, and sometimes all black.
Is there any colourants that I can paint directly on the clay to achieve colour, or would the only way to manually sprinkle oxides on the pots themselves?
Quick question from someone who wants to throw clay into their fireplace and see what happens. I get that pit fired pots are porous and not water tight, but could you put like a plant or something in there?
This is a super-small budget project - I want to make a hole in the ground, at most 24”x18”x12” deep (we’re basically on decomposed granite here so it would be a pretty sandy/rocky pit) with bricks coming up around it another 12-18” or so. I’d add charcoal briquettes, light them, add pottery when the charcoal starts turning to ash, add more charcoal on top, and then let it burn down completely to ash. I would NOT be using wood, only charcoal.
I have space in my yard that should be far enough from the house, with bare dirt (with a large paverstone patio between the dirt and the house), and no landscaping other than a very large cactus anywhere near it. I just can’t tell if it’s legal, and I really want to do this in the safest way possible. :| The alternative is to use a charcoal grill but somehow I feel like it’s less safe, lol. Something about all that heat being suspended in the air rather than in the ground. I’ll have a hose and buckets of dirt handy for extinguishing it at the slightest hint of anything sketchy happening.
I’d do this at the beach or something but need a process that’s repeatable at home (it takes several hours to burn, you have to let it cool down completely, etc. - and I live really far from the beach!)
Has anyone made a budget fire pit like this? What did you find out? After trying to figure this out online I called my local fire station and they started talking permits and referred me to building and safety; the B&S codes on the website are convoluted and specifically exclude charcoal under the “wood-burning devices” section and I can’t find anything specific about charcoal-only pits. I thought maybe someone has made one for cooking and might have some thoughts.
Any advice or experiences would be really appreciated!
I want to make some custom pots for some of my weirder plants that have weird space requirements that don't quite work with standard pots (for example these baseball plants have a very long taproot but don't need the diameter of most pots that tall, or these guys who will need diameter but not depth). I don't have a kiln and have been looking into low-fire clay as a possibility.
We live in the foothills so I'm hesitant to have any open flame going. I have this tinderbox only 100 yards behind my house. Some people use charcoal grills but with a bellows to increase the heat and I'm worried about embers flying, or the metal eventually burning through (to be fair I have never used a charcoal grill in my life so that might not even be possible).
Any thoughts? Thanks! :)
Hi! I am wondering if anyone knows if there is somewhere I can pay to get pottery fired in Hamilton or nearby.
I'm going to try my hand at a bit of pottery as a way to pass this next few months. I've seen plenty of people using a pit fire, but I was planning to use slip cast clay in a mould. Apparently this clay doesnt do well in pit fires. Are there any pottery shops or studios about that will fire things for you? Preferably portadown or dungannon area.
