Callie Beller Diesel

Your kiln firing cycle sounds good, although the overnight hold may be excessive. For a 1 cm ( about 3/8” for the Imperial users) thick piece that’s bone dry, I don’t know that more than 3-4 hours is necessary, even allowing for a more humid climate than mine. We use a 4 hour hold at the teaching studio I’m at, and most learners make some pretty chunky pieces when just starting out.
The end durability of the piece in your garden will be dictated more by your clay body’s fired properties and how they interact with your climate. Freeze/thaw cycles will be important, and I’d follow whatever recommendations they have in your area for overwintering terra cotta plant pots.  Potterycraft doesn’t appear to offer porosity testing specs on their, but they do say it’s reasonably groggy (6/10). With a 30 minute soak at the end of your firing, I would expect your end firing temp to hit 1200, or a good cone 5-5.5.  A bit under the cone 6 end point on this clay, so I would expect some porosity in the end piece. Enough to absorb some water over time, especially somewhere damp enough to grow moss. 

Your kiln firing cycle sounds good, although the overnight hold may be excessive. For a 1 cm ( about 3/8” for the Imperial users) thick piece that’s bone dry, I don’t know that more than 3-4 hours is necessary, even allowing for a more humid climate than mine. We use a 4 hour hold at the teaching studio I’m at, and most learners make some pretty chunky pieces when just starting out.
The end durability of the piece in your garden will be dictated more by your clay body’s fired properties and how they interact with your climate. Freeze/thaw cycles will be important, and I’d follow whatever recommendations they have in your area for overwintering terra cotta plant pots.  Potterycraft doesn’t appear to offer porosity testing specs on their, but they do say it’s reasonably groggy (6/10). With a 30 minute soak at the end of your firing, I would expect your end firing temp to hit 1200, or a good cone 5-5.5.  A bit under the cone 6 end point on this clay, so I would expect some porosity in the end piece. Enough to absorb some water over time, especially somewhere damp enough to grow moss. 

As a regular red clay user, darker clays are going to have a different effect on glazes than lighter coloured ones do. Even leaving out the possibility of oxide interactions, the dark background behind any translucent/transparent glaze is going to reflect light differently than a lighter coloured background will. If you take this effect into account and work with it rather than against, you can get much more satisfying results out of your glazes, whether they’re commercial or homebrew.
 Darker clay bodies DO work well with commercial glazes, they just don’t look the same as the sample they only show on white clay, and that’s frustrating. I have no idea why they only show samples on white clay, because there’s a huge range of clay colours out there, but here we are.
As a general rule, yes, if you’re using brush on commercial glazes, you will have to add more layers over a darker clay for best results. You’ll need the extra pigmentation to overcome that aforementioned dark background. Even on light coloured clays, a too-thin glaze layer is gonna go that yucky green or brown. With darker clays, doubly so.
You may find that variegated glazes, or glazes with titanium or rutile will actually look much better on red/dark clays than they do on lighter lay bodies. The extra iron kicks those rutile blues into overdrive, and it’s really nice.
 If you want a result that’s closer to the samples, you probably also want to choose more opaque looking glazes, or even add a white slip over your red clay to pop certain colours. Or even use it as a way of getting 2 different effects on a piece with only one glaze.
You are not likely to get light or pastel colours to come out true on red clay, unless they’re highly pigmented or contain a lot of opacifiers. Even then, they’ll have a more tonal cast to them.

Your kiln firing cycle sounds good, although the overnight hold may be excessive. For a 1 cm ( about 3/8” for the Imperial users) thick piece that’s bone dry, I don’t know that more than 3-4 hours is necessary, even allowing for a more humid climate than mine. We use a 4 hour hold at the teaching studio I’m at, and most learners make some pretty chunky pieces when just starting out.
The end durability of the piece in your garden will be dictated more by your clay body’s fired properties and how they interact with your climate. Freeze/thaw cycles will be important, and I’d follow whatever recommendations they have in your area for overwintering terra cotta plant pots.  Potterycraft doesn’t appear to offer porosity testing specs on their, but they do say it’s reasonably groggy (6/10). With a 30 minute soak at the end of your firing, I would expect your end firing temp to hit 1200, or a good cone 5-5.5.  A bit under the cone 6 end point on this clay, so I would expect some porosity in the end piece. Enough to absorb some water over time, especially somewhere damp enough to grow moss. 

As a regular red clay user, darker clays are going to have a different effect on glazes than lighter coloured ones do. Even leaving out the possibility of oxide interactions, the dark background behind any translucent/transparent glaze is going to reflect light differently than a lighter coloured background will. If you take this effect into account and work with it rather than against, you can get much more satisfying results out of your glazes, whether they’re commercial or homebrew.
 Darker clay bodies DO work well with commercial glazes, they just don’t look the same as the sample they only show on white clay, and that’s frustrating. I have no idea why they only show samples on white clay, because there’s a huge range of clay colours out there, but here we are.
As a general rule, yes, if you’re using brush on commercial glazes, you will have to add more layers over a darker clay for best results. You’ll need the extra pigmentation to overcome that aforementioned dark background. Even on light coloured clays, a too-thin glaze layer is gonna go that yucky green or brown. With darker clays, doubly so.
You may find that variegated glazes, or glazes with titanium or rutile will actually look much better on red/dark clays than they do on lighter lay bodies. The extra iron kicks those rutile blues into overdrive, and it’s really nice.
 If you want a result that’s closer to the samples, you probably also want to choose more opaque looking glazes, or even add a white slip over your red clay to pop certain colours. Or even use it as a way of getting 2 different effects on a piece with only one glaze.
You are not likely to get light or pastel colours to come out true on red clay, unless they’re highly pigmented or contain a lot of opacifiers. Even then, they’ll have a more tonal cast to them.

As a regular red clay user, darker clays are going to have a different effect on glazes than lighter coloured ones do. Even leaving out the possibility of oxide interactions, the dark background behind any translucent/transparent glaze is going to reflect light differently than a lighter coloured background will. If you take this effect into account and work with it rather than against, you can get much more satisfying results out of your glazes, whether they’re commercial or homebrew.
 Darker clay bodies DO work well with commercial glazes, they just don’t look the same as the sample they only show on white clay, and that’s frustrating. I have no idea why they only show samples on white clay, because there’s a huge range of clay colours out there, but here we are.
As a general rule, yes, if you’re using brush on commercial glazes, you will have to add more layers over a darker clay for best results. You’ll need the extra pigmentation to overcome that aforementioned dark background. Even on light coloured clays, a too-thin glaze layer is gonna go that yucky green or brown. With darker clays, doubly so.
You may find that variegated glazes, or glazes with titanium or rutile will actually look much better on red/dark clays than they do on lighter lay bodies. The extra iron kicks those rutile blues into overdrive, and it’s really nice.
 If you want a result that’s closer to the samples, you probably also want to choose more opaque looking glazes, or even add a white slip over your red clay to pop certain colours. Or even use it as a way of getting 2 different effects on a piece with only one glaze.
You are not likely to get light or pastel colours to come out true on red clay, unless they’re highly pigmented or contain a lot of opacifiers. Even then, they’ll have a more tonal cast to them.

In addition to finding out if, or how much, the glaze will run,  the test tiles will let you see what the glazes look like without the reduction that takes place in raku process..  There's a good chance that without that step, they're going to look a lot different than expected - and your student may decide they don't like the results well enough to use it on the pieces they originally planned.

Mostly throwing large amounts of items on a slow wheel with soft clay is an exercise in economy of motion. In the absence of knowing exactly what you’re doing/not doing, it’s hard to troubleshoot exactly. A good resource to check out might be YouTube though, because sometimes a video can reveal a lot in a short amount of time. If you find it difficult to watch a video tutorial, something that can help is adjusting the playback speed. But if you need text versions, I’ll tag @PeterH, as he’s got a gift for tracking down all kinds of good articles. 
I’m curious as to why you’d want to use a kick wheel if you’re going in to production pottery though. Kick wheels tend to be harder on the body than electric ones, and that’s an important consideration when you’re looking at a job that can have a high propensity for repetitive motion injuries.
Production pottery of any kind is about economy of motion and making things efficiently, so that you can make a lot. Any choice made about how you work that isn’t about efficiency has to have a compelling reason to be included in your process.  If you’re using a particular technique that takes more time, you have to find ways of offsetting that elsewhere in the process. Or the results have to be able to provide enough value in the finished work to be worth the effort. 
 

Firstly I think Callie is right that you may have more success looking for videos. The short video format might favour highlighting little tips and tricks. I suspect that "the East" may tend towards a culture of immersion in the process rather than highlighting details of the process.
Sorry, couldn't find any books, but a few minor hits and follow-on questions on the pros and cons of:
- types of wheel: electric, kick & banding
- throwing vs trimming
- asking Denice
https://www.benthampottery.com/throwing-pots-left-handed/
Throwing Pots Left Handed
...
Throwing is a two handed process. In Japan they spin the wheel the other way and that is nothing to do with right or left handedness. Just carry on as normal. The psychology is interesting. Potentially the focus may be on the inside instead of the outside of the pot which affects the results in an interesting way
...
I’ve been throwing for 43 years, teaching for 20: left handed potters throwing counter clockwise have the advantage, as the left hand is inside, and easier to control the form that way.
...
I am left handed and learned right handed. All you are doing is having the strong hand inside the form like they do in Japan. Handedness isn’t important on an electric non-kick wheel.
...
I find that the issue isn’t often with throwing but with trimming. Most people can learn to throw either way, but trimming is a whole other story. I teach with my wheel turning clockwise and just explain and demonstrate the different hand positions
...
Given that for most of us our strongest hand is also the one with the finest control  I'm not even sure that having the same spin for both throwing and trimming is necessarily optimum. (Although constantly switching may outweigh any advantages.)
A couple of videos  from 
Trimming Mugs/bowls Without The Wheel
https://community.ceramicartsdaily.org/topic/13230-trimming-mugsbowls-without-the-wheel/?do=findComment&comment=97096
Pedantically a misnomer, as both videos show trimming on a wheel-head, but using it like a banding-wheel.
https://youtu.be/f64J6C48ZSo
https://youtu.be/3mmJwnhPivI
Couldn't find anything significant on electrified kick wheels, but did find this.
Hopefully technology is advancing towards a combined electric/kick wheel where you only need to kick where there are positive artistic advantages in doing so. As long-term kick-wheel use could be hard on the body: although maybe artistically good for the soul.
So my only conclusion is you consider which wheel/spin combination works "best" for each of your activities: such as
- opening-out
- main forming
- finishing-off
- trimming.
Is there a clear winner, or is some sort of mixed strategy better?
@Denice any comments? You obviously have some regrets.

Mostly throwing large amounts of items on a slow wheel with soft clay is an exercise in economy of motion. In the absence of knowing exactly what you’re doing/not doing, it’s hard to troubleshoot exactly. A good resource to check out might be YouTube though, because sometimes a video can reveal a lot in a short amount of time. If you find it difficult to watch a video tutorial, something that can help is adjusting the playback speed. But if you need text versions, I’ll tag @PeterH, as he’s got a gift for tracking down all kinds of good articles. 
I’m curious as to why you’d want to use a kick wheel if you’re going in to production pottery though. Kick wheels tend to be harder on the body than electric ones, and that’s an important consideration when you’re looking at a job that can have a high propensity for repetitive motion injuries.
Production pottery of any kind is about economy of motion and making things efficiently, so that you can make a lot. Any choice made about how you work that isn’t about efficiency has to have a compelling reason to be included in your process.  If you’re using a particular technique that takes more time, you have to find ways of offsetting that elsewhere in the process. Or the results have to be able to provide enough value in the finished work to be worth the effort. 
 

Soy wax works great on the bottom of pots, also smells less than paraffin wax when burning off.

The digital fire link seems a pretty good example of the difference a smaller mesh can make.
 
The smaller the better in my opinion for melting silica. I remember back to my bubble experiments and removing quartz/silica additions and trying to source from feldspars/clays always had a better melt. Glazenerd did send me some super fine silica that is still on my list to test about 7 years later 

@tyler it could be a good idea to check with your local clay supplier if anyone who can do that for you. Every clay person I know likes to talk about what they like (clay) to anyone who will hold still long enough to listen to them. They’ll know someone who knows someone. 

Mostly throwing large amounts of items on a slow wheel with soft clay is an exercise in economy of motion. In the absence of knowing exactly what you’re doing/not doing, it’s hard to troubleshoot exactly. A good resource to check out might be YouTube though, because sometimes a video can reveal a lot in a short amount of time. If you find it difficult to watch a video tutorial, something that can help is adjusting the playback speed. But if you need text versions, I’ll tag @PeterH, as he’s got a gift for tracking down all kinds of good articles. 
I’m curious as to why you’d want to use a kick wheel if you’re going in to production pottery though. Kick wheels tend to be harder on the body than electric ones, and that’s an important consideration when you’re looking at a job that can have a high propensity for repetitive motion injuries.
Production pottery of any kind is about economy of motion and making things efficiently, so that you can make a lot. Any choice made about how you work that isn’t about efficiency has to have a compelling reason to be included in your process.  If you’re using a particular technique that takes more time, you have to find ways of offsetting that elsewhere in the process. Or the results have to be able to provide enough value in the finished work to be worth the effort. 
 

If you’re making functional ware, spray paint isn’t going to be a good route. Sculptural stuff? Cold finishes all the way. It opens up sooooo many cool possibilities.

It’s not for food. Liquitex matte medium, a room temperature finish, may fit the bill. It’s UV protectant. Produces a satin finish. Reliable and long lasting. Your fired pieces should be archival without that though.
 

50 years ago, the standard was also cone 10 reduction, and I think cone 6 was filed under “interesting but impractical.” So the extra heat work took care of the difference that the silica mesh size would have made. 200 mesh sil-co-sil was all I could get back in the 90’s, so I used it. And I was firing at cone 10 at the time, and it was fine. 
When I made the switch to cone 6, I came across much of the same info you’ve already listed, and the 350 mesh was more available. I was less concerned with crazing at the time, but I can say that the mesh size makes a difference in glaze clarity at cone 6. 
 
 

Mostly throwing large amounts of items on a slow wheel with soft clay is an exercise in economy of motion. In the absence of knowing exactly what you’re doing/not doing, it’s hard to troubleshoot exactly. A good resource to check out might be YouTube though, because sometimes a video can reveal a lot in a short amount of time. If you find it difficult to watch a video tutorial, something that can help is adjusting the playback speed. But if you need text versions, I’ll tag @PeterH, as he’s got a gift for tracking down all kinds of good articles. 
I’m curious as to why you’d want to use a kick wheel if you’re going in to production pottery though. Kick wheels tend to be harder on the body than electric ones, and that’s an important consideration when you’re looking at a job that can have a high propensity for repetitive motion injuries.
Production pottery of any kind is about economy of motion and making things efficiently, so that you can make a lot. Any choice made about how you work that isn’t about efficiency has to have a compelling reason to be included in your process.  If you’re using a particular technique that takes more time, you have to find ways of offsetting that elsewhere in the process. Or the results have to be able to provide enough value in the finished work to be worth the effort. 
 

Oh gosh, sorry, don't know how I missed that. Okay, so plan B would be to make up a slip and use some oxides to make a black. Slip needs to go on greenware, as soft leatherhard as possible to avoid fit issues. Also test the covering glaze over it before committing a "real" pot. There are recipes for black slips that contain various amount of colouring oxides, most include iron + manganese + cobalt and sometimes chrome also. Something along the lines of this recipe from Vince Pitelka. 

if you are thinking of firing that paint, it won't work.   if you finish firing to the final temp and have left some areas free of glaze so you can add some zing that would work.   a potter who did that was featured on the cover of ceramics monthly years ago and caused quite a stir.   i may remember his name later.

The answer is #3
#5. The kiln will stink more than usual as well
# 6 try it and learn .
School of hard knocks has the best lessons

Usually I work things pretty close together, so I don’t need a lot of “long term” (more than a week) storage these days.  Mostly I use a double layer of plastic to cover things, but I did get a large under-bed plastic tote for handles that I use in a similar manner to what you describe @Pres. I have to ask though: why the board or plate over the sponge? I’m picturing a small throwing sponge or similar, as that’s what I use. 

I found a reference on the Laguna website that said they acquired the Westwood Ceramic Supply company. I’d suggest reaching out to them. I didn’t find any glazes in their current catalog with a WR number, but they may have older records.

We had a situation about a year ago where we started to get crazing on glazes that had never crazed before. It took a lot of trial and error testing with known good batches of materials to determine the problem. It turns out that we had received a batch of 200 mesh silica by mistake instead of 325 mesh. Because there was no clear "mesh" marking on the bag, no one realized that we had received 200. The glaze mixers had unknowingly started using 200 instead of 325 in the glaze mixes. Switching back to 325 solved the problem.  Of note, the crazing happened only on cone 6. We did not get crazing on cone 10. My theory is that cone 6 was not hot enough to melt the 200 mesh completely, but cone 10 was able to completely melt all of the 200 mesh.

@davidh4976, good job on subbing the Custer out. I like how much silica and alumina are in the formula, will make for a good durable glaze. I could see a bit of iron in the recipe if you ever wanted to tone down the blue a little.