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Oh my - this one has pressed a lot of people's buttons! Why aren't you all busy in your studios?????? Ha ha!

 

If anyone is still unsure as to why the man in the store, or anyone else, for that matter, would choose to use bought glazes rather than mix their own, you only have to read the thread started by Min today in Clay and Glaze chemistry, entitled 'Iron Speckles'. I'm in awe of everyone who has contributed to that one. My poor 60 year old brain is struggling to get to grips with the basics of glaze chemistry and reading the posts in that thread told me why! I think I'll stick to form, incising, carving, texture etc. etc. nice white clay and a few oxides...

What a clever lot you all are.

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Finally, I'll rail against the idea that making your own glazes is difficult or expensive.  One thing that always annoys the dickens out of me is to see a glaze that has 15 or 20 components, and all are detailed down to two decimal points.  It ain't necessary, folks.  If a glaze works with 6.23 percent talc. it'll work with 6 percent talc (and if it doesn't, it's a lousy glaze, not worth the effort.)  I'm currently working with slips that are just porcelain trimmings from the wheel, with colorants and other oxides added in small amounts, and they work great, as far as I can tell.  They fit my leatherhard pots perfectly, too.  It only takes a few pounds of various inexpensive things to make a perfectly useful glaze, and some folks make glazes out of stuff you can get at the hardware store or dig out of your backyard.  There are some truly magnificent glazes made out of nothing but wood ash and clay.

 

 

Bingo! When I teach my glaze formulation class, we make glazes that only have 4 or 5 ingredients. We make some really great, interesting, durable glazes with just koalin, flint, and 2 fluxes.There is a massive variety of glazes that can be made from 10 primary ingredients (plus colorants, of course). With a good gloss glaze and a good magnesium matte, you can create a huge palette of surfaces.

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I think one of the hardest things to do is to focus on just one thing. The older and wiser I get the easier this is becoming.

You have to know your limitations. I love all of the interesting glazes that you glaze gurus can come up with, but my heart is not in 600 fired test tiles.

I know mine either. The problem was changing from cone 10 reduction to cone 6 oxidation. We moved from Oregon to North Carolina and my gas kiln rattled to death on the trip. It is hard to get gas in NC and we have been living in a rental for five years.

 I am not dead yet and refuse to give up!!

 

B

(aka Maddmudder, aka Bethbw13

Had some serious puter problems)

 

 

I made the switch to cone 6 oxidation about 7 years ago, and wish I had done it much sooner. I do not miss reduction firing at all, and find cone 6 to have many more options for color. The other nice thing about working with electric kilns is that I can run glaze tests in my little baby test kiln rather than waiting for the big kiln to fill up. That just wasn't an option when I only had a big gas kiln. I can fire several tests a week now, and develop a glaze in a couple of weeks instead of months. The transition was definitely stressful, but it was also a lot of fun to jump into something new.

 

Firing gas is definitely more romantic than pushing the 'On' button, and there a few things that can be done that won't work in an electric, but for most people it's just not practical any more. Building codes have made it all but impossible to do anywhere other than a commercial setting or an unincorporated area. An even then, there's a lot of hoops to jump through. Although I was already strongly considering making the switch to electric kilns, I was ultimately forced to do it when I had to move my shop. I just couldn't find another commercial space that would allow me to install my gas kiln, or one in which it was affordable to run the gas line and venting system.

 

Sorry to hijack the thread!

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Guest JBaymore

Bingo! When I teach my glaze formulation class, we make glazes that only have 4 or 5 ingredients. We make some really great, interesting, durable glazes with just koalin, flint, and 2 fluxes.There is a massive variety of glazes that can be made from 10 primary ingredients (plus colorants, of course).

 

For cone 9-10 .... a triaxial blend of any wood ash, any feldspar, and any clay can keep you going for a lifetime. ;)

 

best,

 

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

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I hope to make room (small, already crammed full, bedroom-turned-studio) to mix glazes at some point...I used to do it and loved it...am glad I kept my (30 year old) formula/firing notes. For now, commercial glaze and modest quantity liquid gifts from others will have to do. I love bare bodies so much, tho, I am not that motivated (yet) to think about expanding. Besides, who am I kidding...I haven't even gotten to my first full load now that it's not freezing out there (where the kiln is).  

 

Shut up, keep calm, throw and throw again, and just breathe, breathe, breathe, all the time.  Or, as Nike sez: Just Do It! 

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It's interesting how different aspects of potting capture us in different ways. I love the wheel--centering the clay, bringing up the walls. Something very therapeutic about it. I've tried handbuilding a bit, but just found it tedious and was never very successful in my efforts.

 

Glaze making though, this is my space. I absolutely love the mixing and experimentation--that feeling when you first open the kiln with a load of test batches. I'll admit, as a newer potter, development of my throwing skills suffered quite a bit when I started making my own glazes. I have a palette of colors and finishes in my head I'm constantly working to achieve. I was a scientist in a previous life, and this seems to satisfy that need in an artistic way.

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tb,  there is room for you in my studio.   lots of chemicals, thick book of recipes, sink, room to work, admiring "ooohs" and "aahhs". :o  :D  :lol:    there is room for anyone who likes the glazing portion of the work.  

 

of course, you probably live in Australia or China and cannot come here.

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>>>> ... This thread has totally energized me to get rid of all the stuff in my studio ... <<<<

I have a hard time getting rid of stuff, so finding all those bags and buckets of clay and consolidating them into

different 5 gallon buckets gave me a sense of freedom.  I didn't measure any particular amounts of different

clays that went into buckets, but I do know that there were several different kinds.  Some of the different kinds

were Amaco cone 5 - 10 clay, Laguna white cone 05 clay, Trinity stoneware cone 10 clay, red earthenware clay (for

Sgrifitto),  Hwy 23 clay (contains lots of red oxides) and Hwy 14 river clay.  So far the two buckets has netted

me 100 lbs of clay for hand building the primitive fired pottery.  The modern clays really helped with the clay body

of the hwy 23 clay since it was great in every way except for firing when it became brittle and cracked, and when

thumped was dull sounding. (Hwy 23 clay outcrops on the side of the road in the middle of no where)  enough deer

run thru it that it is practically already wedged.  Due to the red oxides and red earthenware clay some of the

pottery in the "next to the fire photo" have a reddish tint, but its hard to see the difference.  And when they're

fired the exterior surface takes on a "brick red" color in the flashed (oxidized) areas.  I have probably another

3 five gallon buckets of misc. clays to mix up so that should last just enough for the rivers to go down from

the April freshets of rain to expose the good clays.  The goal is to use up the not so good natural clays from

my house and the low fire cone 05 clays from the art center, and have only cone 6 to 10 clays on hand.  One

bad mix-up would ruin shelves and require alot of unneccessary work.

      And of all days of trying to clean up, a potter down the road dropped off about 200 used bottle of glazes,

underglazes, and oxides.  The 8 or so jars of oxides are from Ste des ocres de France - they are really nice.

Haven't had time to look thru them but it looks like some cone 6 Faience are in the making.

See ya,

Alabama

the modern earthen ware clays f

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