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Wopzilla posted:The mine closed years ago and laguna has been selling from a stockpile. My supplier didn't get a heads up about availability, he said they knew something was going on when they were getting calls from suppliers across the country. The one pallet he had disappeared quickly. It's dumb to price gouge for materials that have cheaper replacements. It's not a 1 to 1 ratio and GB does have unique properties in how it gels but it can and will be replaced by 3134 if they try to price gouge. Granted, I guess they had issues involving production at the Ferro plants during COVID so 3134 isn't especially cheap at the moment but it IS a manufactured material.
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Jul 3, 2023 18:37
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I can’t remember where I read it, but I definitely remember reading somewhat that GB causes a lot of problems with glaze recipes but because it’s what people are used to it still gets called for a in a ton of recipes. Reformulating those recipes with a frit could get the same effects without the problems? This is all hazy and unsourced so please feel free to tell me I’m completely wrong.
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Jul 3, 2023 22:20
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:I can’t remember where I read it, but I definitely remember reading somewhat that GB causes a lot of problems with glaze recipes but because it’s what people are used to it still gets called for a in a ton of recipes. Reformulating those recipes with a frit could get the same effects without the problems? Yeah, it would take some tinkering but you can totally do it if you use a program. Some people actually insist on doing that anyway even before the shortage since GB has high LoI and makes your glaze into pudding.
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Jul 4, 2023 02:49
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The firing went well. No surprises which is nice. I used Gillespie Borate as a 1:1 replacement. The glaze melt seems to be the same. The slurry was slightly less chunky than normal gb. It had been awhile since I made a big flower petal bowl    A customer this week wanted a platter with their cat's face on it. Sgraffito work was done by my coworker 
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Jul 7, 2023 00:30
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Finally starting to learn how to light box
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Jul 26, 2023 03:58
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Been pushing through and finally wrapping up all these seasonal projects. Should be able to focus on regular old dinnerware for the holidays. After all of my whale ornaments were done I was left with a bunch of porcelain scrap that had bits of blue mixed in. It fired an off white, so I added some cobalt to it Bisque fired  With clear  A bit too blue so I cut it with some pure porcelain  One with painted white porcelain on the mold face and casted over with colored slip  Better than throwing the scrap away One more firing and I'll be done with pumpkins. It really feels like the bulk of the year is dealing with these things https://i.imgur.com/ht9doIt.mp4 A drippy pie plate:  I decided to break down and rebuild both of the slip pumps last week. The impeller and rubber housing is a yearly replacement. One if the pumps needed new bearings. I don't think the drive shaft has ever been replaced on this thing  Most interesting thing to happen this past month was this  Was finishing outside to get some nice summer sun and this car pulled up and watched me for a few minutes
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Aug 30, 2023 00:02
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throw big, draw on big
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Aug 30, 2023 06:51
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This last class I spent more time than planned getting these guys created using a preexisting mold. Plaster molds the studio has are for the most part boring, but there are a few rocking ones. Now onto making a set of dinner plates.  
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Sep 8, 2023 16:22
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A firing two weeks ago struggled to get to temperature. It was a telltale sign that a heating element was going. The firing time jumped 45 minutes. Luckily with the glo-bars, it's easy to figure out which is bad These should not be curved  Swapped out with new ones  Typically when I change these things out, it'll reduce the firing time 90 minutes per bar. The previous firing was 15 hours 45 minutes, so I estimated minus three hours that the current firing should be about 12.5 hours Turned kiln on at 10pm and when I arrived at 8am the temperature was 100 degrees higher than desired. The normal firing should be until a cone 4 has fully melted. These are cones 3/4/5/6  So at least two cones higher in firing which led to a lot of blistering   Ended up losing the majority of the firing. Biggest gently caress up in a long time
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Sep 23, 2023 01:02
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I’ve been messing around with decorating by painting with underglaze. I’ll find a color sketch online that I copy to bisqueware with pencil and then fill in. I’ve never really painted so I’ve been pretty happy with how the first couple ones have come out. Although, they all look a lot better from a bit of a distance. The glaze works a lot like oil paints and our instructor is really knowledgeable and has helped me with color mixing. That said I keep having to remind myself it’s not paint and firing does change things, such as the color and intensity. These pictures are all prefiring. The blackbird turned out much better than I expected. I was worried the glaze would all wash out, especially as it’s in dark clay. Still need to finish and fire the bowl. It is going to be a gift so I’m pretty anxious about it.    
z0331 fucked around with this message at 16:42 on Sep 29, 2023 |
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Sep 29, 2023 16:39
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This is only tangentially related to ceramics but I don't know where else to ask: I bought a Feltman-Langer mug for a gift, but I'd like to get rid of the tacky flamingo design and color the mug a solid blue. I'd like it to be dishwasher safe (and obviously food safe), but any search I go just had a million people on Etsy hand painting designs on IKEA mugs. This is the end product I'm looking for Is there a spray paint that'll do it? Enamel? Some sort of glaze? E: PS all the stuff y'all have posted in this thread is beautiful Soul Dentist fucked around with this message at 23:31 on Sep 29, 2023 |
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Sep 29, 2023 23:29
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Soul Dentist posted:This is only tangentially related to ceramics but I don't know where else to ask: I bought a Feltman-Langer mug for a gift, but I'd like to get rid of the tacky flamingo design and color the mug a solid blue. I'd like it to be dishwasher safe (and obviously food safe), but any search I go just had a million people on Etsy hand painting designs on IKEA mugs. If you have access to a kiln and want to take the gamble of firing a random piece of pottery... I would suggest a lower cone glaze and fire the piece to said cone first to see what happens. I'm not taking any risks this weeks firing and I'm staking out the kiln during the night to catch and document the firing. It's nice to see that the kiln isn't glowing from not a peep hole or element 
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Oct 4, 2023 03:00
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Celadons are super hard to get to come out even. This is four layers of each color. Oh well, I don’t mind it in this case since it kinda gives it a water feel. Only thing I’m annoyed about is I accidentally made the loon look angry with a badly placed stroke. 
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Oct 6, 2023 14:48
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z0331 posted:Celadons are super hard to get to come out even. This is four layers of each color. Oh well, I don’t mind it in this case since it kinda gives it a water feel. Only thing I’m annoyed about is I accidentally made the loon look angry with a badly placed stroke. I would totally eat cereal out of angry loon bowl. Just sayin.
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Oct 17, 2023 17:30
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poemdexter posted:I would totally eat cereal out of angry loon bowl. Just sayin. pretty sure angry loon is both my spirit animal and my next forums username
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Oct 19, 2023 13:19
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Did a hummingbird plate that I think came out nicely. Kinda wish I’d chosen not yellow for the background circle but still, colors compliment each other. Applied the glaze with a slip trailing bottle and it still didn’t end up uniform.  
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Nov 20, 2023 16:42
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Used the glaze spray gun on some plates for the first time, and there's a lot of lessons learned. Came out decent though. Need to watch some YouTube videos on how to get cleaner lines and better technique. It was interesting though how the two glazes came out of the gun in very different strengths. 
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Nov 20, 2023 17:40
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hell yes. just found this thread and read through it. it's been especially interesting to learn about the industrial ceramics stuff. I still make these, which were birthed by a thread 13 years ago:  I've never taken any classes. my brother needed a place for his workshop when I moved to the area, so I've had free access to a wheel and a kiln since I started in 2006. (we amicably divorced our practices a few years later so I have my own now.) learned how to mix my own glazes bc commercial ones are so loving expensive. I started out making face jugs, a southeastern folk art form that I'll post about later, but a few years ago I juked into sort of abstract oceany sometimes functional things. never having been taught anything is sometimes an advantage. nobody ever was around to tell me that what I was doing wouldn't work. this one's got a chunk of iron embedded in it... apparently the oxidized surface turns to hematite in the kiln:  the form of this plate is garbage, but I wanted to demonstrate that a pork shoulder bone can survive cone 6:  this piece is chock full of unsifted raw clay from the roots of one of the several trees that's fallen on the property behind my house:  this one's less gonzo but it demonstrates my favorite ash glaze (unwashed hardwood fireplace ash and Redart, 1:1):  I've been incorporating a lot of organic inclusions, local materials, interesting chunks of other things, just generally experimenting constantly for a couple years now. base clay is Redstone from Highwater Clays in Asheville, NC. I mix in some Lizella (from and named for Lizella, GA) pretty frequently, since it makes the ash glaze look even better. cone 04 bisque, cone 6 glaze, both oxidation.
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Nov 20, 2023 23:05
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Empty Sandwich posted:hell yes. just found this thread and read through it. it's been especially interesting to learn about the industrial ceramics stuff. Would love to know more about your wild clay adventures. It's something I'm very interested in and have dabbled in but local potters who use wild clay haven't been just super willing to share their knowledge. Any other wood ash glaze recipes you've liked?
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Nov 20, 2023 23:24
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:Would love to know more about your wild clay adventures. It's something I'm very interested in and have dabbled in but local potters who use wild clay haven't been just super willing to share their knowledge. Any other wood ash glaze recipes you've liked? everything I read about ash told me that I'd need fluxes at ^6 and I tried a couple dozen variations before finally just doing a line blend and realizing that the recipe I needed was both dead simple and shouldn't work (according to what I'd read). I get the sense that wood ash is so wildly variable that it's hard to predict what'll happen. mostly I just use wild clay for surfaces. I do end up combining the above ash glaze with local clays to make them stick to whatever I'm making. I just look for something that's dark red and hopefully also pretty gummy and I'll paint it onto surfaces people won't eat directly off of. I haven't found a real deposit as such, just the normal red clay soil of this part of the world. I was out at a local historical bridge and I noticed the mud daubers had made a partially white nest so I really need to poke around there and find out where they're getting their kaolin. (not from a local potter, as far as I can tell, but I have seen them use commercial clay before.) I'm happy to share but I'm wildly undisciplined so it ends up being a grandma recipe a lot of times... notional and dependent on what's on hand. I can say that mixing anything with a commercial clay, even without cleaning out the sand and miscellaneous non-clay stuff, has worked fine up to approximately 1:1 (again, for stuff that's not for food).
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Nov 20, 2023 23:48
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z0331 posted:Did a hummingbird plate that I think came out nicely. Kinda wish I’d chosen not yellow for the background circle but still, colors compliment each other. Applied the glaze with a slip trailing bottle and it still didn’t end up uniform. What brand celadon are you using? I only get good results from pouring
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Nov 21, 2023 09:25
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Why not paint, wax paint then dip?
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Nov 21, 2023 15:46
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Anyone ever handmade tile? I'm thinking about remodeling my kitchen in the future and would love to make it as complicated as possible.
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Nov 21, 2023 17:42
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I’ve thought it about for a centerpiece and surrounding it with store bought; never a whole kitchen worth. If you’re just doing a color you can get away with glazing directly onto greenware
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Nov 21, 2023 19:33
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Spikes32 posted:Why not paint, wax paint then dip? second. it's really hard to get a smooth brush coat with certain glazes. Kaiser Schnitzel posted:Anyone ever handmade tile? I'm thinking about remodeling my kitchen in the future and would love to make it as complicated as possible. never done it, but my understanding is that rolling the slab on top and on the bottom helps prevent warping. (that is, running it through a slab roller once, flipping it, and running it again.)
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Nov 21, 2023 20:38
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cheese eats mouse posted:What brand celadon are you using? I only get good results from pouring Amaco, marigold and sky. What do you mean by "pouring"? For the plate I used a slip trailing bottle - it wasn't brushed on. But I guess I still was a bit inconsistent. The marigold turned out nicely, at least. Kaiser Schnitzel posted:Anyone ever handmade tile? I'm thinking about remodeling my kitchen in the future and would love to make it as complicated as possible. We're doing it for our kitchen. I made a tile cutter jig, which is basically a flat board with two rails, the height of which is the tile thickness (3/8" in our case). Plop the block of clay on the board and then run a wire cutter on the rails to slice it to the right thickness. Then we bought a tile cutter like one of these, cut out as many as we can for each slab, smooth them out with a rubber rib and place them between two pieces of drywall to dry as slowly as possible. There's still some warping, but most have come out ok so far. That's for blank tile. If you want carved/designed, we did that at a workshop. Basically we made a plaster block and carved the relief to press into the tile. The hard part was pressing firmly and evenly. The instructor had made a big, clunky tile presser that did the job, but it wasn't super practical. We tried on our own using a rubber mallet and it didn't imprint super well, and the plaster would likely get destroyed pretty quickly. And of course, if you don't have a kiln, you need to find someone willing to fire them all for you. Edit: You could also likely buy bisqued tiles and simply glaze them the way you want. z0331 fucked around with this message at 21:22 on Nov 21, 2023 |
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Nov 21, 2023 21:09
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Spikes32 posted:Used the glaze spray gun on some plates for the first time, and there's a lot of lessons learned. Came out decent though. There are a lot of variables that go into it. Are you spraying on bisque or greenware? I'm guessing you're also using a gravity fed gun, and if that's the case, a thinner glaze mixture will spray better. I use two different pressure tanks, one is just for white which is a gerstley borate base, so the tank will need about 20 psi to give adequate flow for even application. The over glazes are thinner and only need roughly 5psi to spray. The key is to find the correct combination of glaze thickness and air pressure. Too thin of glaze and too much air, you'll just push a puddle around. Too thick and not enough air, you'll get a lumpy/speckled pattern. If I get some free time in the coming week I'll take some pictures of my steps glazing various items. In other ceramics news, ordered my final material shipment of the year and my supplier informed me that there was a death at the US Gypsum plant and the temporary halt in production means there won't be a readily available supply of plaster products until early spring. So if anyone might need some plaster or USG products any time soon, get it ordered asap
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Nov 22, 2023 01:39
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z0331 posted:Amaco, marigold and sky. What do you mean by "pouring"? For the plate I used a slip trailing bottle - it wasn't brushed on. But I guess I still was a bit inconsistent. The marigold turned out nicely, at least. Pour it into the piece. Like take the bottle I just pour. I have a fan brush handy to move the excess away back into the jar cause the CMC gum in the mix will pour too thick. You’re good to go on one pour. I use amaco and that’s my technique
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Nov 22, 2023 05:22
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my wheel is out of commission (again) and I'm having to do these mugs on an Amaco wheel from The Past
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Nov 26, 2023 22:28
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PS do not buy a Shimpo
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Nov 26, 2023 22:28
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My FIL has this in his garage, he got it in 03 and never used it. He's going to repaint it, refurb the motor and transport it up in January. No idea how much I'll actually like it compared to what I've been using.
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Nov 27, 2023 04:49
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Empty Sandwich posted:PS do not buy a Shimpo This is why I bought a used Brent
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Nov 27, 2023 08:40
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cheese eats mouse posted:This is why I bought a used Brent couldn't find one fast enough, so I've got a new Clay Boss on the way
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Nov 27, 2023 14:59
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I haven't posted in awhile. I've been very busy with being a clay club steering committee board member. I'm also in charge of glazes and glaze maintenance and I load and unload the kiln because I clearly don't have enough to do and I hate myself. I'm even thinking about learning how to use the pugmill so I can have yet another thing to do for no money. I'm also working on a project to improve a legacy glaze that has been around the studio for years. It's called Riki White and it's an extremely simple recipe. 40 Gerstley Borate, 40 Neph Sye, 10 ball clay, 10 tin oxide. It has a great effect on red clay bodies and works well with texture but there are two main problems. One is that it's loving 40 percent Gerstley Borate. It's essentially pudding. Even at a proper SG, it's stupid thick. The other problem is that it runs like a bitch, possibly due to the thickness but possibly due to the large amount of Neph Sye. I've been thinking up tweaks, I just tried taking 5 from the Gerstley Borate and the Neph Sye and adding 10 percent silica. And it worked, it was less thick and it didn't run at all. Only problem is that it lost a lot of the things that made it special. It's whiter now instead of being an off-white and it still gets toasty but not as much as it did before. I'm going to try taking the 10 completely from the GB next and leave the Neph Sye at 40. Edit: I doublechecked the recipe and it turns out I was completely misremembering. It's loving 50 percent GB, 25 percent Neph Sye, 25 percent ball clay and 10 tin oxide. I did a revision on a loving revision that I didn't even know I made because half GB is ridiculous. Lareine fucked around with this message at 20:11 on Nov 28, 2023 |
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Nov 28, 2023 19:58
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Lareine posted:Borate problems This will go with my spray glazing info. I want to express that I learned the bulk of this stuff from an 80 year old man, who learned this stuff in the 40s. My experience and "training " are very unorthodox and the way we do things is very diy. Until recently, the bulk of equipment was made by us to suit the space and particular need. It works/worked for us, but advice given might not translate to a modern ceramic environment. That being said, gerstley borate. I've made the switch over to Gillespie Borate and have not noticed any difference in my white glaze. Before buying the ram press I didn't use any additives in the glazes outside of veegum cer to help with a bit of powder texture while handling before firing. You could leave fingerprint marks depending on where you touched a piece. The plates that I'm pressing now are so dense that they absorb moisture slowly and glazing was problematic if humidity was too high. I would get tiny blister while glazing, roughly the size of a pencil eraser. So I started to use cmc to help with that problem. My white glaze is 22.5% gb. That makes the mixture thick, I can't imagine what 50% is like. I treat it like it's slip. There are some visual characteristics of slip that let me know if it's good -can't see my hand through it -webs between my fingers -continues to run   https://i.imgur.com/4xzU1Ix.mp4 I dont weigh the clay anymore. This current batch is on the thicker side. Ideally, it the gravity should be 1.76 and it's more 1.8 at the moment. Since using the cmc, I've been making the mixture in a similar way. This allows me the spray all pieces, slip or pressed, the same way; but also allows me to pour the insides of hard to spray items- teapots, decanters, etc. This batch I made today was on the thin side because the leftovers in the tank was on a thicker side https://i.imgur.com/vaDyrVe.mp4 https://i.imgur.com/V2MpfHv.mp4 This is with just an extra quart added in. A new batch, I'll start around a gallon of water. I started at 1/10 of 1% cmc, which was close enough to 10g that I rounded up. The glaze recipe is just a bit over 9000g. Over a few weeks, with each new batch, id add an additional 5g until the glaze got to that slip-like consistency. It ended up being 30g. I let it sit overnight in the water before mixing. It doesnt have enough water yet and the mixture looks like cottage cheese. I add a little water until the slurry is where i want it. Sieve through a 200 mesh strainer and I'm good to go. I don't know how you're using the glaze, but you can make various adjustments from there with water content. The cmc delays the water absorption so you can get away with a thinned glaze. Might take two dips instead of one, but you won't be dealing with gerstley borate chunks. Now onto spraying. We made this glaze booth. It's a a big turntable with five turntables mounted on top  I use one of these tins with a bolt mounted in it as a mold. Any extra hydrocal I pour into this  The individual turntables are wooden with the same bolt size  Each is drops down onto bushings  https://i.imgur.com/eAjlpeJ.mp4 I start on the inside. Spray enough to give a uniform haze. Once the wetness goes away, I give another pass until the entire area has a uniform gloss. Through trial and error, that's my indication that there is enough glaze. 99% of the pieces are glazed ombre, so I only go about 3/4 of the way up   With pieces that have a tucked in bottom or foot, glazing uniformly to the wax line is tough, so I just flip those pieces over. Because the wax won't absorb, I can't spray straight on. That'll push the glaze across and and leave a thick beading on the bottom. Too much glaze and you get a higher likelihood of it melting and sticking to the kiln shelf. So I spray across the backside. Same method- two passes until wet glossy  Wipe excess off https://i.imgur.com/deKIqL9.mp4 Plates, oval motion, rotate 180 degrees and repeat. I have this propped up with a sponge. Normally I'd hold in my hand. It was tough spraying while looking through a phone https://i.imgur.com/mMeWtjm.mp4 https://i.imgur.com/GUVy9sI.mp4 A small plate https://i.imgur.com/rEwE87H.mp4 https://i.imgur.com/ASrfyGk.mp4 Rotating it 180 degrees gives the plate an uniform haze. The exhaust is pulling the mist upwards so one side will look uneven if I don't do that Larger items like platters:  Start with the ombre edge  Haze back and forth  Rotate and repeat  I don't know if any of that will be helpful to someone but I'm willing to share/elaborate if wanted
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Nov 29, 2023 04:49
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That is really helpful actually. I think something I need to go find examples of is the best way to glaze multiple colors with spray instead of dipping. But also just how to get uniform haze with spray like that is more than I had.
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Nov 29, 2023 06:39
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Feeling like I'm starting to churn out stuff I like and feels more me as I have had time to deep dive into doing this almost like a job. Also making my own glazes now, but trying to burn through a lot of the commercial glazes I bought in my frenzy as a new potter. I'm moving into a new studio that is catered towards production level potters who have outgrown a hobby space, which is a ceiling I am pushing against a lot. My first big group show is a Christmas sale in a few weeks and I have 50+ pots to bring with me. I still need to figure out my half of my table set up, order some stickers with my instagram handle, packing paper and paper bags  
cheese eats mouse fucked around with this message at 09:17 on Nov 29, 2023 |
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Nov 29, 2023 09:12
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Lareine posted:I have been so goddamned busy. I joined the pottery club in January. By May, I'm on both the Steering Committee and the kiln crew. I also have glaze responsibilities. Glaze responsibilities.
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Nov 30, 2023 03:22
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What glaze is that middle stripe? One you've made or a commercial one?
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Nov 30, 2023 21:06
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z0331 posted:What glaze is that middle stripe? One you've made or a commercial one? It's a red iron oxide wash I made and wiped back with a sponge. The recipe is in the cone 6 glaze book by John Britt. I made the blue glaze too.
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Dec 2, 2023 08:28
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