This one’s a bit out of the ordinary. Nothing to do with wood. But it did happen in the shop, on the bench, so it probably qualifies for this blog.

Accidents happen. This time a broken pot. A beautiful raku pot.

Whoops

Then Kim says: do you think you can fix it?

… And then I start researching Kintsugi which is the Japanese practice of repairing broken pottery. The traditional approach involving using urushi lacquer. But that stuff seems pretty horrible to work with. Apparently Urushi contains the same toxin as poison oak and poison ivy. So I worked instead with epoxy, gold pigment, and then with gold paint.

The biggest challenge was finding the patience to wait for the epoxy to cure in one area of the pot before moving on to glue other pieces together.

Not a perfect job, the inside looks a bit messy, but it all worked well enough that the pot is now back on display in the house. A fun weekend project.