A Good Glaze Book.

[MMB]

A while back I asked about some good books to have as a potter. i was given some good recommendation and over all ive enjoyed having mainly the Potters Dictionary. Yet, these days ive been drifting out of the pit fire world and trying to focus more on the functional. I would like to drift towards the Cone 6 world as many have. Really over all I want to learn more about making glazes. I hate myself to this day because I never spent enough time in the glaze room in college. So my question is what good books might be out there to lay out glaze making techniques? I can find a lot of stuff online and even some recipes, but really when it comes to seeing whats in them I dont know all the functions for each ingredient. Ive done a lot of research on different ingredients, but would really like to have a  book or books to aid me. The potters dictionary is great but what else might be out there?

[justanassembler]

especially @ cone six
Mastering Cone Six Glazes.  It is out of print in the dead trees edition, but you can still find copies if you look--its available as an ebook for your idevice.

The Cushing Handbook-a great reference to have on hand.

John Britt's stuff--any of it--its all pretty good.

[PeterH]

Mastering Cone Six Glazes is back in print

 

From Clayart Digest, Vol 11, Issue 12

Date: Sun, 11 Aug 2013 12:38:51 -0400
From: John Hesselberth <jjhesselberth@gmail.com>
To: "Clayart time being." <clayart@ceramicist.org>
Subject: [Clayart] Mastering Cone 6 Glazes Is Back In Print!
Message-ID: <3F453329-4874-47DB-B571-E61A16B51D81@mac.com>
Content-Type: text/plain;    charset=us-ascii

Hi Everyone,

Good news regarding "Mastering Cone 6 Glazes". Ron and I have brought out a black and white edition at a much reduced price with the color images of all our glazes being readily available on our website, www.masteringglazes.com.  Here are the details and our reasoning.

When the 6th printing sold out in March of this year, we found it difficult to justify printing more. To get reasonable economics on color book printing you have to print several thousand at a time. Although it has been an extremely successful book and we have sold over 18,000 over the years, sales had slowed--most potters already have a copy---well, it seems, not everybody. We have received numerous emails pleading with us to bring it back into print.

Of course, as Clayarters know, the book is still available as an eBook on Apple's iPad, iPhone, iPad mini, and iPod Touch. And for those with a Mac, it will be available on your computer when the next version of the Mac OS (called Mavericks) is released this Fall). While sales of the eBook are growing nicely and it is now available in 50 countries around the world, not everyone has one of those Apple gadgets or a Mac.  And for the same reasons we discussed on this list back in late 2012 we have not brought it out on Android or Kindle devices. Plus some people just want a "real book".

So what to do??  Ron and I have always been willing to break new ground and experiment--we are one of the few to self publish a pottery how-to book and maybe the first to turn it into an eBook--so we have been examining options.  Also, frankly, we are just a little teed off at the folks trying to sell the original book at prices ranging from $150 - $6000+.

What we found was that Print On Demand (POD) technology has come a long way since we first published back in 2002--at least for black and white books with a color cover. POD for color books is still quite expensive. Going POD would allow us to print a few at a time and still have economics that would allow us to lower the price significantly ($24.95 vs. $39.95 for the color version). Yes all the graphic images would be in grayscale, but they would be decent quality. And we could put a matching set of color images on our website. So over the summer we have been testing various POD printers and working out how we would pull this off.  Here is what we are offering.

The book will be slightly smaller in size (6 x 9 instead of 7 1/2 x 10) but thicker (240 pages vs. 168). It has the same full color cover albeit downsized to 6 x 9.  The content had to be reformatted and updated, but we worked from a format similar to what we used on the eBook and did the same updating as we did in the eBook. After some trial runs in July and August, we are ready to offer it for sale. We got a new ISBN for the book (9780973006322) so there should be no confusion between the original and the POD editions. For the time being we are only selling it through thebookpatch.com--a small business based in Arizona, USA. Find it at the URL below or click on the "buy now" button on our website.

http://www.thebookpatch.com/BookStoreDetails.aspx?BookID=21563&ID=d2bea83c-2c34-4ed0-8a00-a6f12113515d

or

http://www.masteringglazes.com/buy-mastering-cone-6-glazes.html

We have already updated our web site with all of the color images and are also using it to update some of the glaze recipes when ingredients change in a significant way. For example you can find revised recipes for the expansion series glazes there now--they are revised to use G200HP or G200SP instead of G200 and Texas Talc instead of Nytal.

If you decide to buy, please let us know how this works for you. If this B&W version is well received it will allow us to keep "Mastering Cone 6 Glazes" in print for the foreseeable future.

John and Ron

Mastering Cone 6 Glazes is now available as an eBook. Check it out at:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/mastering-cone-6-glazes/id573583135?mt=11

Regards, Peter

[Marcia Selsor]

Mastering Cone 6 Glazes is excellent but I also like Michael Bailey's Cone Six Glazes. He does a great job of separating glaze formulas by fluxes and surfaces.

It has a good reference guide for materials with European, US and Australian materials.John Britt's new book will also be focusing on ^6 glazes. I think it is due out in 2014.

Marcia

[Benzine]

especially @ cone six

Mastering Cone Six Glazes.  It is out of print in the dead trees edition, but you can still find copies if you look--its available as an ebook for your idevice.

The Cushing Handbook-a great reference to have on hand.

John Britt's stuff--any of it--its all pretty good.

Pfff, I just looked on Amazon. One of the older copies are going for well over $100.

[Benzine]

Mastering Cone 6 Glazes is excellent but I also like Michael Bailey's Cone Six Glazes. He does a great job of separating glaze formulas by fluxes and surfaces.It has a good refernce guide for materials with European, US and Australian materials.John Britt's new book will also be focusing on ^6 glazes. I think it is due out in 2014.Marcia

That book is much more reasonably priced.....

[justanassembler]

 

especially @ cone six

Mastering Cone Six Glazes.  It is out of print in the dead trees edition, but you can still find copies if you look--its available as an ebook for your idevice.

The Cushing Handbook-a great reference to have on hand.

John Britt's stuff--any of it--its all pretty good.

Pfff, I just looked on Amazon. One of the older copies are going for well over $100.

 

See above--apparently its back in print--also if you call around to pottery suppliers many still have the old edition in stock for the regular retail price...

[Marcia Selsor]

The Mastering Cone 6 Glazes is available on ebooks. Here is John Hesselberth's website,

http://www.frogpondpottery.com

 

Marcia

[Benzine]

Which of the two would you recommend Marcia?

 

In my classroom, I use low fire clay, and commercial glazes, but in my home studio, I'm kicking around the idea of going to a cone 6 vlay and mixing my own glaze. So some reading into that would help.

 

How much would it cost, for a "starter set" of the basic glaze making ingredients?

[Marcia Selsor]

Both books are excellent. I like matt glazes and there is more discussion about them in Bailey's book. MC6G goes into depth on glaze safety.

 

That is a tough question because materials vary in price depending on location. You could probably get started for $300. I think this was discussed before, if not here then on Clayart.

Many people contributed to what some of the basics would be and estimated quantities.

Marcia

[smastca]

MC6G is available in Tuckers Pottery Supply in Toronto, Ontario.  Order online and they deliver.  For the regular price - not the Amazon prices......

[MMB]

yeah ive been thinking about what to buy as a starter. i found a couple of clear and matt glaze recipes that i might just pick up the ingredients for just to have them around and maybe tweak with a colorant. Like I first stated though I want a book to teach me some proper info. I dont know much about raw materials when it comes to recognizing fluxes etc.

[MMB]

I placed an order with that store in canada. thank you for that. Ill stick to MC6G for a good start. I think its ridiculous that some people are trying to sell that book for over a thousand dollars. I would of bought the new print of it but the whole b&w then having to go online to see the color seemed a little tedious. Glad theyre reprinting though.

[PeterH]

MMB,

 

Start by getting access to a glaze program;both as an aid in making substitutions, and as a first step

in understanding the chemistry behind glaze recipes.  If you don't already have one, you might start

with a free one

http://www.glazesimulator.com/
... and use online information on materials, starting with 

http://digitalfire.com/4sight/material/index.html

... the rest of their site is a fund of useful information.

 

Then look at the late Ian Currie's magnificent book Stoneware Glazes. It's long out of print but you can

read the text at:

http://stonewareglazes.currie.to/

 

Start with Currie part-1, which discusses the interactive effects of fluxes, alumina and silica. Presenting

an informative way of making test tiles to show these effects.

 

Then read Bailey's book on Cone 6 glazes.

http://tinyurl.com/naogsor (with look-inside)

...  which covers different styles of glaze and gives pictures of the effects of colourants.

 

Then read part-2 of Currie's book, which covers recreating a very wide range of classical types of glaze. It's

interesting in it's own right, and clearly indicates that Bailey's valuable book largely covers an important but

fairly bland range of glazes. [Not a criticism.]

 

Finally "Mastering Cone 6 Glazes"

http://tinyurl.com/ng5b55n

is a sort of master-class in developing a smallish set of "industrial quality" glazes with a little "life" in them.

http://tinyurl.com/pe2438w

[More on the net about slower cooling cycles generating richer effects.]

 

Regards, Peter

 

A report on exploring fluxes for rutile glazes is given at:

http://www.potters.org/subject87780.htm/

 

A google image search for Currie test grid glaze will bring up some interesting hits.

[MMB]

thank you very much for all the input. That last post peter really layed it all out there. Ill have to really toy with that simulator along with the good ol google to understand what Im using. Really Ill just toy with it in conjunction with the raw materials Atlanta Clay provides. Going to be a lot of reading to be done from here on out. I made up some sample clay pieces last night to be ready for a first run of tests next week.

[Guest JBaymore]

You can also download a fully functional version of Insight on their site. It is time limited...and is generous in the timeframe. For my required ceramic chemistry course at the college I require the Level II version of that Insight software.... which gains acces to the HUGE subscription-only database that is constantly being updated.

 

best,

 

...........john

[Chantay]

John Britt is suppose to be coming out with a cone 6 glaze book.  It should be exceptional if his glaze instruction videos are indicitive of his teaching.

[Pres]

If I remember correctly the Mastering Cone 6 glazes has a materials list in the appendix for minimal startup. You may get a start from there and a web site for your favorite supplier. I use a spreadsheet anymore for what ifs with cut an paste to check budget concerns.

 

I pulled out my copy of Mastering Cone 6, and yes in the appendix there is a list of recommended materials. Interestingly enough there is also a list of not recommended materials and the reason why.