Archive for August, 2017

Wednesday, August 16th, 2017

Picknick time at Boyd Lake State Park:

Boyd Lake beach is more clay than sand

The clay is easy to find and sample. Just watch out for various bird (and people) droppings. You might think the clay would be good for making  DIY pottery, perhaps?

Clay test pieces

These are what I would call “Raw Boyd Lake Clay” in that the material was never processed to remove the sand and bird shit or whatever might be in the clay before rolling it into the shapes seen above.

Hot Kiln, up to 1800 deg. F.

This is  a small kiln the HUB got free. It’s small, but it was free, so we took it.

Cooked out Clay

The clay samples are shown above, each taken out of the kiln at a temperature listed below (I needed to put this data someplace, and it shows how long it takes the kiln to get up to temperature.

Kiln test, start time 9:58 AM

TIME            TEMP Dec. C         Samples

10:04                200                     one, band #1 greenware color

10:12                 400                     two, dand #2 red with dark spots

10:18                 500                     one, band #3 red, reduced dark spots

10:26                 600                    one, Band #1+, bright red, no sport

10:40                 700                     one, band #2+, as above

10:59                 800                     one, Band 3+, as above

11:39                  900                      two, unmarked, dark drown

The Soup, Again

Saturday, August 5th, 2017

The BIG CAN OF SOUP IS STILL THERE:

With Duncan Madog

Remember back in 2009, in the old blog there was this soup can at the UCA? Well, it’s still there. Today however, I somehow made a connection that I had forgotten all these years. It seems the Campbell Soup Company was instrumental in setting my career path toward a future in robotics, if a spectacular short future at that, but none the less, the deed was done. Maybe someday I will tell you about it.