Friday, August 21 · Alpine, Utah · You’re in
Everything you need for the nighttime raku workshop
You’ve got your spot. Now let’s get you out there with the right pots, the right clothes, and enough snacks to carry you to 3 AM.
Safety meeting starts in
Gates open at 7:30 PM. The safety meeting starts at 7:45, and we can’t start it until every last person is standing there.
The whole page in ten lines
For when you don’t have time to read the rest. It’s all covered in more detail further down.
- Friday, August 21. Gates open 7:30 PM. Safety meeting 7:45. More than ten minutes late and you can’t participate, and there’s no refund.
- The address is on this page, down in the cream-colored section. You’ll need the password we sent you.
- Sign the waiver before you come. Everybody, every time, even the veterans. Here’s the link.
- Pots come bisqued and fully glazed. B-Mix with Grog or Berlin Gray. Up to four skinny pieces or two wide ones, under 28 inches of width all together.
- One glaze family per pot. Never mix brands on a single piece, and know exactly what’s on each one.
- Bring all your own food and drinks. We supply none of it, and nothing out there is open at midnight. Cooler if you want it cold.
- Dress for it. Long pants, long sleeves, closed-toe shoes, hair tied back. That one isn’t a suggestion.
- Bring a chair, warm layers, and bug spray. Headlamp if you want one. We’ll have floodlights up, but a lot of the property stays dark.
- Participants only. No spouses, no friends, nobody who just wants to watch.
- It ends when it ends. Usually 2 AM to 3 AM. Everybody stays to the finish and everybody helps clean up.
The short version
Four things, then all the details
When
Friday, August 21
7:45 PM
Gates open at 7:30. Show up more than ten minutes late and you’ve missed the safety meeting, which means you’ve missed the workshop.
Where
A barn in Alpine
The property belongs to Dan’s parents. Pop in the password we sent you and the address will show up right here.
That’s not it. Check the message we sent you, and don’t worry about capital letters.
How long
Until it’s done
Probably 2 AM to 3 AM. There’s no promised end time, and everybody stays through cleanup. If everything goes smooth we could be out of there sooner.
Bring
Pots, food, layers
Your pieces have to be bisqued and completely glazed before you get there. We don’t supply food or drinks.
How the night goes
Here’s your whole night, start to finish
Slide the bar below to walk through it, one moment at a time. The sun sets at 8:15 that night. It’s pitch black by 8:44. Pretty much everything you came for happens after that.
7:30 PM · Gates open
Park, unload, plant your chair
The sun is still up and nothing has happened yet. Easiest part of the night. Get your pieces out of the car, claim a spot around the firing area, and start meeting the people you’re about to spend eight hours standing next to. A small group of people who all showed up for the same strange reason is most of the magic right there.
Moment 1 of 8
Start time is real, but the rest of the night is not on a schedule. Raku takes exactly as long as raku takes. Everybody stays until the last pot is out and the site is clean, and that’s the only version that’s fair to whoever ends up in the final firing.
Where you’re going
The address is behind a password
This is somebody’s home, so we’re not putting the address out where anybody can read it. Use the password we sent you and it’ll pop right up.
Here’s where you’re headed
Same spot as the card up top, repeated down here so you don’t have to scroll back for it on the drive.
Enter the password
That’s not it. Check the message we sent you, and don’t worry about capital letters.
Don’t have the password or can’t get it to work? Text Dan and he’ll send the address straight to you.
Pack the car
What you bring, and what we bring
This is the nighttime list, and it’s a different animal. If you’ve done a daytime raku with us, forget everything you remember about sunscreen and cooling misters. You need the exact opposite of all that.
You bring
- Your bisqued, glazed pieces. Glazed with raku glazes and ready to go straight into a kiln. There’s no time or place to glaze at the workshop.
- All your own food and drinks. We don’t supply any of it. And honestly, we have no idea what’s open out there at that hour, so plan like nothing is. Throw a cooler in the trunk.
- Warm layers. A sweatshirt, a jacket, a blanket, whatever you’ve got. August afternoons in Utah will lie right to your face about what a pasture feels like at 2 AM.
- A camping or folding chair. Technically optional. Practically? Bring one. You’ll want it.
- Long pants, long sleeves, closed-toe shoes, and something to tie your hair back. This one is a safety requirement, not a style note.
- A headlamp or flashlight if you want one. Totally optional. We’ll have floodlights over the working areas, but a whole lot of the property stays plenty dark.
- Bug spray. It’s a field. At night. In August. You know how this goes.
- A respirator or face mask if you want one. Optional, and most people skip it, but the glaze fumes and smoke do find you every so often.
- Any extra combustibles you want to mess around with. Whatever you bring has to be bone dry. Damp stuff just steams and you get nothing out of it.
We bring
- All the raku equipment. Both kilns, the propane, the tongs, the cans, the whole operation.
- The combustibles. Newsprint, pine shavings, and animal bedding, and plenty of it.
- Every piece of safety gear. Welding gloves, welding aprons, welding sleeves, safety goggles. You don’t need to buy a single thing.
- Cleanup supplies. Scour pads and Soft Scrub for getting the carbon off your pots right there on site.
- India Ink back at the studio. Want your crackle to read deep black instead of gray? That step happens at The Clay Hole during a regular class, not out at the barn.
- Floodlights. Over the kilns and the working areas.
No spectators. None. Participants only. Everyone standing near a 2000 degree kiln has sat through the safety meeting and signed the waiver, and that is exactly what keeps this whole thing running smoothly.
Before you fire
Give your pots the best odds
The raku gods demand some pots be sacrificed. That’s part of the deal and it always will be. But here’s the thing: most of the pieces we lose out there failed for reasons that got built into them weeks earlier, back at the studio, before anyone lit anything.
Tap each card below. It flips open and tells you exactly why that one matters. Six of them are about your pot surviving the night. Two are about making it look like you meant it.
Grog is pre-fired clay ground back into the body, and it works like a few thousand tiny expansion joints. Your pot goes from around 2000 degrees to open air in about four seconds. A smooth clay body has nowhere to put that kind of stress, so it splits. These two are the only clays we recommend for raku, and it isn’t a close call.
Thick spots and thin spots cool at different speeds, and all that stress piles up right where the two meet. It’s why so many raku failures crack in a clean ring instead of somewhere random. Even walls give the whole pot one cooling curve instead of three of them fighting each other.
Handbuilt seams are the first thing to let go under thermal shock, and they let go loudly. Run an extra coil down the inside of every join and blend it until you can’t find it with a finger. If you can still feel that seam, it’s a crack sitting there waiting for an excuse.
A sharp angle inside a form funnels all the stress down into one line. Soften every interior corner with a rib or a damp finger and that stress spreads across a curve instead of picking one spot to blow out. Costs you thirty seconds at the wheel. Saves pots.
A heavy base under thin walls holds its heat way longer than everything above it. The two halves cool at completely different rates and the pot cracks right where they meet, which is why so many gorgeous pieces come apart just above the foot. Trim until the bottom feels like the same pot as the rest of it.
Any moisture still hiding in there turns to steam at temperature and leaves through the nearest wall, taking a chunk of your pot with it. Bisque it, then let it sit. A piece that felt dry a week ago is a much safer bet than one that felt dry yesterday.
Wax, tape, rubber bands, liquid latex, whatever you’ve got. Anywhere the glaze doesn’t reach, bare clay grabs the carbon and goes black. Resists are how you end up with pattern and line and edge instead of an even coat, and they’re a really great way to make a raku pot feature some of that amazing trapped carbon.
That smoke has to land somewhere. Unglazed areas are where those deep, gorgeous blacks come from, and the contrast between that black and a flashed copper or a fine crackle is most of what people are reacting to when they pick up a raku pot and go quiet for a second.
Doing all eight is not a guarantee of anything. It just moves you from hoping to reasonably confident, and out there that’s a real difference. Best advice we’ve got: bring one piece you’d be genuinely gutted to lose, and one you wouldn’t. You’ll have a better night either way.
The glazes
Nobody knows what your pot is going to look like
Not you. Not us. Not the people who made the glaze. And that’s not a disclaimer we tacked on to cover ourselves. It’s just how this works, and it’s one of the best parts of raku.
Glaze the same pot with the same glaze a thousand times and you’ll get a thousand different pots. Where it sat in the kiln. How fast it came out. Which way the wind was blowing. How long it sat in the can. How much oxygen snuck back in before the lid dropped. All of it changes what you get, and none of it repeats.
Come with a direction instead of a picture in your head. The people who show up wanting one specific result usually go home let down. The people who show up for the adventure almost never do.
Glaze rules that aren’t negotiable
- Know which glaze family is on each piece. Different families fire to different temperatures. If you can’t tell us what’s on a pot, we can’t fire it right.
- Never mix brands or families on one pot unless you know they fire at the same temperature. One family per piece, every time. Mixing is the fastest way to turn a good pot into a ruined one, and it can wreck the firing for whatever else is in there with it.
- Some raku glazes carry an up-charge. Most are included. The pricey ones top out at $15, and you’ll know which is which before you touch them.
- Amaco’s raku glazes have been discontinued, so don’t build your plan around them. There are still dozens of raku glazes to choose from.
- Everything gets glazed before the workshop. Use your regular class times, or take one extra studio day on top of your membership. There’s no time or place to glaze at the workshop.
How much you can bring to fire
- Up to four tall, skinny pieces, or
- Up to two wider pieces.
- Combined width has to stay under 28 inches. Measure each piece at its widest point and add them up. That’s what keeps eighteen people fitting into one night.
- Usually one pot per person per firing. Your pieces go in across separate rounds, not all at once. That way we all have fun all night long.
- Not going to have pots ready in time? You can buy premium wheel-thrown bisqueware from Dan, roughly $30 to $250 depending on the piece. Ask Dan and he’ll price them out for you. Members get first pick in the order they ask. These pieces are all very well thrown, but as with all raku, there are no guarantees.
The raku dipping glazes are here
Eight Laguna raku dipping glazes are sitting in the studio right now, ready for this workshop. Dipping is fast, it’s ridiculously satisfying, and it gets you an even coat in a way brushing almost never does.
Worth knowing before you plan your week: these raku dipping glazes take a whole lot longer to dry than our standard dipping glazes. Give them real time, hit them with a heat gun, or park them under the heat lamps. Do not count on dipping a piece and having it ready an hour later.
One catch. Dipping glazes require certification before you can use any of them, and that includes these. Same certification as our other dipping glazes, so if you’re already certified, you’re good. If you’re not, it takes one sitting. Get certified here — and do that this week, not the night before.
Safety
Everybody goes home with all their eyebrows
The inside of that kiln hits almost 2000 degrees, and several people are pulling pots out of it at the same time. Every single unload is choreographed and walked through before we ever close the lid. We haven’t had one injury yet and we plan on keeping it that way.
All of that only works if everybody is running the same play. Which is why the safety meeting isn’t optional, and why anybody who misses it can’t participate.
- Sign the waiver before you come. Every participant, every workshop, even if this is your fourth one.
- Dress the part. Full-length pants, long sleeves, closed-toe shoes, and long hair tied back and secured.
- No horseplay, no practical jokes, no joking around about safety. Not once, not as a bit.
- Stay for the whole thing and help clean up. Both of those are just the price of admission.
Fine print
What if it rains?
Light drizzle? We fire. Dress for it and come anyway. If heavy rain is rolling in, we reschedule and Dan texts everybody directly, so keep an eye on your phone that afternoon.
How late does it actually run?
Usually somewhere between 2 AM and 3 AM. We can’t promise that, because firing rhythm depends on a bunch of things nobody controls. Plan your Saturday morning around the late end, not the early one.
Can I leave early?
No. Everybody stays through the last firing and through cleanup. Whoever lands in that final round deserves the same crowd and the same set of hands the first round got.
Can I bring someone to watch?
No. Participants only. Everyone on site has sat through the briefing and signed the waiver, and adding people outside that circle is exactly how a well-run night stops being one. You may see a guest or two out there with Dan — those folks have been cleared ahead of time.
What happens if I’m late?
More than ten minutes past 7:45 and you can’t participate, and there’s no refund. It’s a hard line because the safety meeting is the whole foundation of the evening. Give yourself a buffer on the drive.
Can I get a refund or reschedule?
No refunds, for any reason. You’re welcome to sell your spot to somebody else in class for what you paid or less. Just let Dan know who’s taking it so we’ve got the right name on the list.
One week out
Get your pots ready. Sign the waiver. Bring snacks.
The waiver is required for every participant, every workshop, no matter how many of these you’ve done.