Alas, poor teapot, you died too soon

No pictures in this post, sorry.

The poor teapot. I went to check on it today and see if it was dry enough. Goodness knows it should have been. Pieces must be bone dry before you bisque fire them. If not, the moisture in the pots will heat up, turn to steam and blow up. This is the same thing that happens with air bubbles in pieces. The moisture in the air bubble is the problem, not the air. If a piece is dry enough, it can handle an air bubble. Not that I recommend testing this out, mind you. Air bubbles = bad. How do I know if a piece is bone dry? Well, a quick check is to lick it. You stick your tongue on the pot, and if the moisture quickly disappears, then it's ready. If it takes a few, then it's not. Yes, this is gross, but it's one way to tell.

Anyhow, the teapot was dry enough (I could tell without doing the lick test). I was cleaning it up a bit with a green scrub and then turned it over. Sigh... cracking. There might have been an air bubble there or something else to cause cracking (my bad trimming? I don't know... I've decided to blame goblins). I tried to clean it up knowing full well that the best path would be to just start again and make a new teapot. Ah well... I get stubborn sometimes.

At any rate, I managed to poke a hole in the bottom of the teapot and the crack just looked horrible. Even if I managed to patch it, the bottom would have always looked bad.

And so, I shall have to do what I said in an earlier post, make a bottom to fit the lid. Oh, I should have mentioned, as clay dries, it shrinks. So, I have to take that into consideration while comparing sizes of wet pots to dry.

Well, I was looking for a challenge and something to keep me out of trouble :P