Monday, May 12, 2014

Guess what I got for Mothers Day, Some Wood

I gave my daughter instructions that I didn't want anything for the kitchen.  To be passed onto her dad.

Never in a bunch of Sundays would you guess what I got.  And I loved it, exactly what I wanted, couldn't have got anything better.

It was 2  sheets of wood

I bet ya no other mothers in New Zealand  happily got what I did!

Here it is.....it was all nicely tied up and wrapped in some lovely gift wrap too.  I quickly got rid of that stuff and got down to the business of figuring out how to draw a couple of perfectly shaped ovals.   With the help of a piece of string, a ruler and a hammer I soon had a couple of decent sized ones marked out. 



These ovals are about 60cm long by 45 cm wide.

The reason I need these board shapes is for when I want to flip over an oval bonsai pot to put the feet on.

At the moment I'm just using any bit of board that will fit.  Some of them are quite long and heavy and I really struggle to flip them on my own.  Hubby's been helping me lately which makes it really easy, but when I'm on my own, the last thing I want to do is wait for hours until he's home from work.

I figure that if I can make some ovals about the same size as my pots I might be able to flip them over on my own alot easier.  This board is reasonably light as well.

The reason why the ovals are marked out this big is because of the last pot I made.   Its the biggest so far.


Its 51cm long and just barely fits sideways into the kiln.  There's alot more room at the sides than it looks in the picture, but I suspect its getting up to the maximum size I can make for the kiln.  Thank goodness it shrunk alot during the drying!

I seem to have a bit of a problem with the kiln cooling down too quick, so I bulk up all the empty spaces with kiln furniture and bits of broken shelves etc.  It just seems to retain the heat a little longer, especially around the sides of the pot, as these cool down before the pot bottom and feet.  It seems to work for me, so I'll just keep doing it.

So that is why I was so happy to receive 2 sheets of wood for mothers day!