Earth
Bleach
and Fire
a demonstration by Ed Karch
Safety
All three can hurt you.
Bleach
Wear safety glasses and rubber gloves, keep it off your skin and clothes. Read the label.
Fire
Clear the area of combustibles. Have an extinguisher handy. Watch your hands and loose clothes.
Mud
How can you hurt yourself with mud? Fired, spitting hot mud flying all over the place.
Face mask and long sleeves.
Bogolon uses mud as dye. We use mud as resist similar to wax in batik
The characteristics of the mud we need are: consistent size particles no big chunks, low sand and loam, and high clay content. I use potters clay.
Water
added to the consistency between pancake and biscuit dough or thin
drywall mud.
I
mix mine in an old blender. Check the yard sales.
Application
of mud is done with pastry bag with appropriate nozzle or I use
Plockmans mustard jar which has good nozzle size and a jar size that
fits the hand. I tried ketchup bottles and several brands of mustard
to find the right nozzle.
A
sealer may be needed to keep mud from dying the wood, depending on
the color of mud and porosity of the wood. Diffuse porous woods are
best such as maples, fruit woods, holly, poplar. Porous woods work
best where the objective is to show off the wood grain patterns.
Bleach
Two part bleach lightens wood but when heated darkens sooner than the wood shows char.
On open grain bleach concentrates in the pores and when hit with fire darkens emphasizing the pores which is reverse the normal darkening of late wood over lighter early wood.
Other substances may also do the same.
