So – the green bottle (Susan’s) came out okay. It’s a bit over-fired, but not badly. Apparently, having only 2 bottles in the kiln makes the pieces run hotter. I fired to 1450F, same as last time, and the green bottle melted more. The brown olive oil bottle is seriously over-fired – it’s getting close to a full fuse, which is not the plan for slumped bottles.
These two bottles were fired flat. I realized from the results of the last firing that the less there was in the kiln, the lower the top temp should be. So I fired these to 1400 F. After all, they could be refired if they didn’t slump. But - they look good to me.
We were talking about the olive oil bottle, and we decided that it got a little odd because it was a square bottle. So, instead of gracefully melting and drooping into the mold, the sides got soft and the top edge didn’t come down flat, but slid off to the side a bit. This would probably be an issue with slumping any square bottle.
Another consideration is that the kiln isn’t level. When I laid the bottles on the floor for the flat slump, they wanted to roll toward the wall. Whether it’s the floor that isn’t level, or the kiln table, isn’t clear. We might consider getting a level and some shims…
Next time, I won’t use that big mold for the regular wine bottles, unless we decide that we like that folded-over edge. Could be a design feature, don’t you know.
The bigger bottle (fired flat) fired really flat. On the last 2, I put them in the kiln parallel to the back wall. On these, I put the bottles in perpendicular to the wall. That reduced the tendency to roll.
Fired up to 1400.
Would cutting the bottom off the olive oil bottle help fix the square bottle issue? I know it wouldn’t be quite the same, but it might look a bit better.
Possibly, but that seems like a lot of work for something that should be simple-ish.