Damp Box

It used to be the case that I worked from home. I would be "at work" at 6am so that I could be done by 3. This gave lots of time for pottery or anything else. And of course, I would be able to take an hour to trim if some pots were at just the right stage.

I no longer work from home. It was a difficult decision to switch positions because of the freedom of working from home. I was worried I wouldn't have enough time to keep enough production. I was worrying about the wrong thing. I can easily throw a kiln load in one sitting on a weeknight. The problem is scheduling trimming and handle attachment and other tasks that need to be accomplished during drying. This problem is especially compounded in the summer (peak production), or when the kiln is on since things dry faster.

Enter my latest project. Without this damp box I am completely relegated to making lidded and handled items to the weekend. Periods of time when I can repeatedly go to the studio and check drying progress. In order to make more pieces which require attachments I needed a more controllable drying situation.

I simply used some scrap lumber that I appropriated from the neighbours fence when it was replaced and built a box between two shelves. The interior is 30 inches by 27 inches by 11 inches. Obviously it's not huge. In fact it won't accommodate medium to large platters. But that's the purpose, it's for mugs and pitchers. The plastic I had lying around from renovating our bathroom and the hinges came off a dog fence that I built for my previous office (one dog had a habit of puking in our area). They're damn hinges, spring loaded to keep the door closed, very nice. So all in all I didn't spend a cent and I had something fun to do while the kiln fired. (Leo's cups are in there cooling as I type.)

The picture shows its inaugural run. Since the kiln fired to 1200C yesterday, it gets pretty warm in the garage. Too warm to allow these mugs to cool slow enough so the handles don't pop off so instead of just draping them in plastic like I normally do they got put in to the new toy. It worked great.