Experiment
On backyard experiments, raw materials, and why waiting for the perfect time is the longest wait there is
There is no reason to be intimidated by trying new things that may not work. For sure, you need to be safe and follow the laws where you live, but at times it is fine to do experiments and a little testing in your own backyard. It is very possible to buy up some raw materials like sand, fire clay, alumina, and portland cement and create a few bricks that you can try drying and firing out in your fire pit out back. It’s so easy a caveman could do it. Oh wait, they did. So since you are in a much better position by far in living standards, it will be easy enough to run little pottery tests of your own and find out what might happen.
Many times those who build things from what is just lying around already have a head start because those things happen to be the right things. It might be difficult to have old kiln bricks or other raw materials lying around if you were never into collecting in the first place. There are loads of YouTube videos on almost any topic you can watch and learn from others. You could also make videos yourself on things you are trying. It is possible to mix your own clay, make your own bricks, mix your own glaze, and fire your own little kiln and have a few pots where you in fact made everything from scratch, just like baking a cake.
In order to become more self-sustainable, self-reliant, and self-sufficient you will also need to be brave and try things that may not work, to get them out of the way so you can find what does. Start out small and once you have found the thing that works after many fails you can do that thing more and scale it. Once scaled, maybe you could use that new thing to help others in some way. Not only would what you create be a gift of generosity, but so would the fruits of those labors.
One of the worst things we can do is wait too long for the time to be just perfect. There will be no perfect time to do the things that could bring about the change we seek to make. There will never be enough money or enough vacation or enough supplies to have everything perfect. Inspiration strikes to help us out when we take action and take the very first steps, no matter how big or small, or if we stumble a little or fall. As long as we are falling forward rather than backward and getting back up, we are rewarding ourselves by action. Now I need to get busy and widen out that rocket kiln firebox so it draws correctly.
If I were living yesterday a second time: I would have started the backyard experiment sooner and spent less time thinking about whether it was the right time to start. The first test always tells you more than the last plan.
Things I am grateful for: Old kiln bricks lying around that turned out to be exactly the right things. A backyard large enough to run experiments in. The cavemen who figured out fire and clay long before YouTube existed.
If I get to live to be 86, I might only have: 12,665 days left. Not one of them will be the perfect day to start. That has never stopped the cavemen and it is not going to stop me.
Originally published at Creek Road Pottery
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“The first test always tells you more than the last plan” I like that.