Ahhh, becomes clearer. The experience I have in this regard is with very
large platters with a small foot and there is an issue of the droop you
mention. If you are not glazing and you are not going so high that you risk
the clay itself melting, I would make clay support pillars of various
heights to use both for the bisque and the highfire or just fire once. You
could also use kiln supports. Using fabric is going to leave you with the
same problem of the wings flattening out I would think. Even for the bisque
my platters need support. Are you working with paper clay or are the wings
so terribly thin that they cannot risk 'handling' until highfired? Again,
just my 2 cents. The platters I make are around 27" and are heavy. Clay
wads are placed around the edges.


"Susie" wrote in message
...
In message , DKat
writes
If it is so fragile (I assume you mean thin), why would its weight, firing
it to a mature temperature, be a problem? As long as you are not firing
beyond the clays' range, I have never seen any clay collapse, melt, etc.
from its weight. You could bisque fire to about 1046 and that would make
it
less porous, weak. Are you going to glaze this piece? If not, I would
pass
on the bisque fire all together.

Just my 2 cents.


I'm talking about flying dragons with horizontal and vertical outstretched
wings, tails etc. Unfired, the height of the main dragon is about eight
inches from claw to top of its vertical wing, with no support. The plan
is that when fired the wings and a lot of the detail become translucent.

I need to pack ceramic fibre under the dragons' "arm pits" and other bits
and pieces to support the wings, etc as well as under their heads and
necks to stop them collapsing too far. No, I'm not glazing it, which
takes out some of the complications that could have happened. I

I suppose that I could under fire and make sure, but after a lot of work
I'm trying to make sure that this comes out as intended and not dragons
with the droops!

Susie
--
Susie Thompson
If you can't stand the heat, don't tickle the dragon!
to email me, replace deadspam.com with susiethompson.co.uk