Eight bowls, three cracks: what I learned from my first full glaze firing

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I’ve been throwing for two years but I’d never filled a whole kiln shelf with my own work until last month. Eight bowls, all the same clay, four glaze combinations. Five came out. Here’s what the other three taught me.

Thickness is everything

The three that cracked were all thrown late in the session, when I was tired and stopped paying attention to the base. You can feel it happening at the wheel and choose to ignore it, which is what I did. The kiln finds every lazy bit.

Now I weigh the ball of clay before I start and check the wall with a needle tool before I take it off. It adds a minute. It has saved me a fortnight of waiting to be disappointed.

Drying takes longer than you think

Bangalore in monsoon is humid enough that “bone dry” took nearly two weeks, not the four or five days I’d read about. I rushed one bowl because I wanted the shelf full and it told me so — a hairline split along the foot that opened up in the firing.

The fix is boring: throw a batch, then wait. If the shelf isn’t full, fire a smaller load or wait another week.

The speckled white is a keeper

Glaze test no. 4 — a speckled white over the stoneware — is the one I’ll use for the next batch. Two coats, not three. Three goes flat and slightly muddy where it pools, and the iron flecks disappear entirely.

It’s on the studio page if you want a look at how it came out.

What I’d do differently

Throw fewer, throw thinner, throw earlier in the day. Stop poking the drying shelf. And accept that a third of a batch may not survive — that’s the hobby, not a failure. I spent about a week being annoyed about three bowls before I remembered nobody is paying me for this.

Next batch is six, not eight. All in the speckled white. I’ll report back.