Roberta12

I use my bench grinder all the time for glaze runs (green course stone) and then two small dremal tools to clean up with. 
My angle grinder for shelves and bricks
Rubbing stone to smooth pot bottoms
and yes on the surform for trimming  as well. 
300 disc CD player as well as Pandora piped into studio and kiln area -must have for me on sperate volume controls

I agree with everything stated. I would add surform.  I use mine a lot for trimming.   

I agree with everything stated. I would add surform.  I use mine a lot for trimming.   

I agree with everything stated. I would add surform.  I use mine a lot for trimming.   

She is offering a free online workshop on Saturday the 24th.  Might be worth checking out.

She is offering a free online workshop on Saturday the 24th.  Might be worth checking out.

I have seen matte questions a bit here so ……
Just noticed this came out! So posting it here in the event you are still working on these. Sue does a great job of explaining and providing answers to the question: How do I make a matte glaze / more glossy (Stull matte anyway) ? You might find it worth the read https://suemcleodceramics.com/how-to-turn-a-matte-glaze-glossy-with-one-ingredient/
She does mention other mattes and also provides good insight on under fired mattes etc…. IMO

My reasonings on the ratios are that the stull chart shows true mattes seem to sit below a 1:5 alumina to silica ratio. ~0.15 boron and a 0.30:0.70 alkali:alkaline ratio look to make the most durable glass when fired at cone 6 as per an NCECA talk about glaze durability I watched, which included a chart of measured durability of a glaze with varying boron levels and alkali:alkaline ratios at cone 6. Every other tile melted just fine at cone 6, just this one without iron. Maybe it just didn't get mixed well enough. Perhaps it's a mistake I made somewhere when making the batch since all of the other tiles with colorants matured.
 
I was looking at glazy for recipes with similar ratios and found https://glazy.org/recipes/147183 which is very similar to what I came up with and it melts at cones 4-7 in the semi matte region of the stull chart.

I think something might have been lost in translation. Makes more sense that it is an engobe that Hild uses.
Example work below from Forrest Gard with a similar finish, albeit a little coarser, using one of Rhodes engobe recipes. If the engobe was sprayed on dry clay then polished with a diamond pad after firing I think it would very much resemble the finish on Hild's work. For her chocolate black pieces there must be other ingredients to maintain the dark chocolate black colour.

 
 

I can lose a day working in my studio,  even recycling clay and cleaning  time fly's by.   My husbands loves to work on cars but hates lawn work.  We hire a man to help us with outdoor work,  last summer the front end on his car broke.  My husband  agrees to fix his car instead of paying him for his work that day.    The hired man comments later  that he has never seen someone so happy to be working on a car.  My husband spent his life writing technical books on amusement rides, plane, trains and construction  equipment.   But is happiest when he is working with his hands.  Denice

As this just came out of the kiln I thought I would share: these are cone 6 porcelain casting slip test tiles.  (Coasters cut in half.) To which I've added various amounts of Mason Stains: Vivid Blue, Delphinium Blue and Zircopax. 
So that I can apply the glaze thinly I add stain to the clay, as well, to add to the opacity of the glaze. (I find that glaze drips/overlaps, become less evident if the clay body matches the glaze.)
Rather than use a total amount of 6% Vivid Blue, in the glaze, on top of a very white porcelain body, I added 3% to the body and 3% to the glaze. 
Its been a tedious process but its really interesting to see how the stains interact with the clay and glaze.

Given there is only 20 spar in the Bright Sky Blue recipe and I'm guessing you probably have Custer I would just use that in place of the G200-HP. Tiny difference in the sodium and potassium but when added together they total the same in both formulas below. Highly doubt this will make a difference to the glaze.
Round of the numbers to make things simpler. For a 100 gram test batch I'ld round to the tenth decimal point. 
Bright Sky Blue BASE ONLY ^6

 

You didn’t even get to cone 022. Yes, I would rebisque after you sort out your ventilation issues. 
Although, just because I deal with Celsius numbers a lot more, that 1045 number is suspicious to me. 1045 C is close to a cone 04 bisque. Double check which scale your kiln is set to before you do anything. 

If your supplier is willing to share when they took delivery of the stuff you bought, you might be able to figure out which one it is with this timeline. 

Thanks Tom @Hulk for the link on the 2015 posting.  I did not see that one.  I did see the link to Digitalfire comparing G200 and G200HP.  The person I talked to today, at the supply house, was not knowledgeable about the actual product.  And because I just took what they had in stock (two 10 pound bags, already bagged up and a 5# bag) I do not have a label to look at either.  However, they are a great facility, I will need to talk to one of the owners tomorrow and see if I can find a source for the G200.  It is slightly darker in color than what I have in my tub.  Tomorrow, when I am in the workshop I will pull my G200 recipes and continue this exploration.  Thanks as always for your expert opinions.  @Dick White @neilestrick @Min @Hulk  
R.

Good question!
Confusing, looks like G200 ran out, replaced by G200HP, which also ran out.
If possible, compare the G200HP component analysis against the material you have now.
There's enough potassium and sodium differences between the G200HP and "Old Blend" to justify small batch testing*, imo.
Digitalfire article:
G200 HP Feldspar (digitalfire.com)

This thread has some history:
Feldspar G-200 - Clay and Glaze Chemistry - Ceramic Arts Daily Community
 
*else limited testing, then look to adjust small amounts if you already made a big batch!
 

Might matter, might not. What's the recipe? 

Some feldspar history... G200 was a potash feldspar mined in Monticello, Georgia, but the ore was higher in potassium than other comparable potash feldspars, such as Custer. To resolve this difference, they blended it 70:30 with a soda feldspar brought in from a mine in Spruce Pine, North Carolina. About 15 years ago, the bean counters decided that trucking soda feldspar 300 miles to just to mix it with another feldspar was not economical, so they stopped that. The plain potash feldspar from the Monticello mine was relabeled as G200HP (for High Potassium) and the ceramic industry was advised to mix their own if we wanted to replicate the old G200. Some of us did, some of us bought a product blended by Lauguna and marketed as Old Blend, and others of us moved on to other brands of potash feldspar. About 10 years ago, the Monticello mine was exhausted, and G200HP is no more. The Imerys Corporation (which now owned the mine and product) found a potash feldspar similar to the old blended  product (and other potash feldspars) in Spain and began importing it as G200EU.
So, to answer your specific question - no, you can't buy G200HP anymore (but I know someone who has some). There is nothing else like it on the market that has that high level of potassium. I don't know if you can trust the label of what you just got as actually the old blended G200 that has not been widely available for a long time or maybe is the Spanish G200EU. Because of these nuances, using another brand of feldspar with your remaining G200HP or in place of it is likely to change the way your G200HP recipes turn out. Or you can take a deep dive into some glaze chem software and sort it out from there.

It depends on what type of glaze it is and how much is in the glaze. I'd run a test first.

On the subject of one’s body wearing down … I’m 52 now, approaching the 30 year mark of my pottery-making life. When I am going through a busy stretch with work, I have a nightly appointment with my heating pad, to soothe my aching elbows, wrists, and back. The past few years, I have been taking a 2 month break after the holidays. Pandemic forced me to do it, now I choose to do it. The recovery time makes a big difference. Throughout the year, I prioritize my physical health, knowing that my job depends on it. Running, yoga, sleep, healthy diet. Last year I started taking a collagen supplement, and that seems to help with my chronically sore elbow. Maybe the most important advice I have for a younger potter is to make sure your throwing clay is nice and soft. 
I hope to retire with my hands being functional enough to do things like cooking and gardening. 

On the topic of your body being able to do the work: There's a very real possibility that one's business model will have to change (or even stop) well before you reach retirement age. I am at a point in my career where that is happening to me. I'm 51 years old, and after 30 years of making pots my hands hurt way too much to continue wheel throwing. It's nothing that surgery can fix for the most part, and I want to be able to use my hands when I retire some day, so I am now a hand builder! If I was making my living 100% from making pots, that would be a severe change in my production output and my business may or may not be able to survive that kind of change. Luckily for me, selling pots is only one of 4 income streams I have. That said, kiln repair work is also really hard on my body and I'm starting to see signs that I will probably have to stop doing it well before retirement age. None of this was an issue when I was 40, I'm just worn out. Once it starts happening it seems to build quickly, so you have to plan ahead for those changes. There's a reason you don't see many 64 year old guys framing houses or installing roof shingles.

Joseph, I apologize for being unclear! I did not mean that you made this comment. You did not. I was referring to this entire discussion, and to many other discussions I’ve seen, here and in other places, where the differentiations are not discussed. 

I agree with most of what you’ve written here, but these points need to be challenged a little. Being able to produce the volume that it takes to earn a living with pottery is not really about time management, or an awful amount of labor. It’s about training your body to be able to produce high volumes, using a reasonable amount of time and labor. The “modern machinery” required for a pottery studio is your own body, honed for efficiency. There’s only one way to develop this …. by doing it for a few decades. 
I do strongly agree that everyone should define “success” for themselves. But I also believe that the different definitions should be talked out openly, and weighed with relativity. Some are turning a profit, in an amount that equals a nice side business, while working another day job. Some are doing it full-time and doing well, but would not get by without another form of financial support (spouse or parents). Some are paying for their entire lives (housing, vehicles, food, utilities, health insurance, retirement plan) by making and selling pots, without any other support. All of these are valid businesses, but they aren’t equal. As a person in the last category, it really annoys me when anyone suggests I should act more like a person in the first category. That’s not the boat I’m paddling these days. I’m not putting down those in the first category, because I was that person when I started out! I’m arguing that anyone who wants to discuss the Business of Pottery should recognize and understand the differences when they are discussing it. 

I spent a couple of hours yesterday morning running some screen printing tests. I'm using a 110 mesh screen, Speedball underglazes, and raw Xuan paper. My findings:
- Speedball underglazes come fairly thick in the bottle, so with no modification they actually print pretty well for 1-2 prints. However, by the third print the underglaze would stop going through the screen and it would just print water. The thicker the underglaze the worse it got. If I washed off and dried the screen, then it would print again. I think the underglaze must be sealing up the screen.
- I don't have any guar gum or dextrin in the studio, but I do have CMC gum and Veegum T, which together are fabulous for suspending glazes and making them brushable. Typically I would make a syrup out of them, but I didn't want to add too much water to the underglaze so I mixed it up like thick snot- 2 tablespoons of CMC and 1 tablespoon of VGT to 1 1/2 pints of hot water (normally would use 1 gallon of water). Let it soak (overnight if you have time), and mix it with a stick blender.
I added 1 teaspoon of the snot to a pint of underglaze and ran a dozen prints without any problems. I also thinned out the underglazes a bit and was much happier with the thickness on the paper. No need to let them stiffen up at all. In fact, Speedball underglazes are a bit too thick in the bottle. I'd seen people say it should thicken up to a toothpaste consistency, but I didn't find that to be necessary or desirable.
- I was concerned that the CMC gum would make it more difficult to transfer, since in a typical application the gum makes the underglaze hard and resists water (which is why I always recommend applying underglazes to leather hard and bisque firing before glazing if you're working with dipping glazes). With the transfers they worked much, much better with the added gum. Great release from the paper. I lay the transfer on the leather hard pot, dab it with a wet sponge, then lightly roll it with a little brayer.  I'm doing some bold patterns, not thin line work, so it's easy to control how complete the image transfers by how long I leave the transfer on the pot.
- The raw Xuan paper is very fragile when wet. You have to be very careful about rubbing it when it's sitting wet on the pot. I've got some half raw coming and I'll see if that holds up better.
EDIT: Forgot to add- I have tried making the transfers with newsprint before, but I don't like how much the paper wrinkles as it dries. The underglaze was also more likely to flake off when dry. I'll try it again with the new gum-added version later this week and see if it behaves any better. The good thing about the newsprint is that it's much more durable than the Xuan paper.

I always find the discussions of success interesting. Success is such a hard word to pin down, what some people consider success to others might be laughable.
A potter making 50K a year in profits(not revenue) might be wildly successful to themselves, but someone else might consider that awful with the amount of manual labor it took for a person to do that in most cases. Making pots as an individual is really hard work no matter what techniques you use.
Success is really up to the individual, if you are happy making 10K a year in profits and are securing your lively hood through another manner, congrats you are happy and successful!
Pottery as a business is probably one of the most challenging forms of art type business you can take on. The equipment is large, the materials are heavy, the ingredients are a hazard and the time and manual labor that goes into each piece is usually under valued.  If you sell in person, you have to haul tons of stuff to a fair or show. If you sell online, you have to package and ship materials that are fragile and cannot be easily replaced. Neither of those things are optimal. It really is one of the most challenging sole owner businesses out there. Which probably explains why there are not a lot of individual million dollar potters, but plenty rich in livelihood, joy and a good bit of money.
I had a fundamental problem with pottery and turning it into a business, it doesn't scale very well. At some point you are going to cap out on the amount of shows you can do, pots you can make, and boxes you can pack. If you want to push into 6 figures you have to be really smart with what you do and be savvy in time management. It isn't easy to do and as others have shown it definitely is possible to do; but other types of businesses can scale so much easier with a single person and modern machinery.
I really like making pots and I like selling them too. Knowing someone is drinking out of my cups year after year experiencing joy is a nice feeling. It is one of the best reasons to be a potter. Not many forms of art are used daily in such an important thing as nourishment of our bodies.  I still think being rich in joy is way better than being rich in money. Unfortunately you need both!
I think I agree with GEP on this subject of instagram. Those people with millions of followers are wildly successful at getting likes and follows, but really they are earning way more money for instagram than themselves. That being said I know that instagram can add to your sales and get visibility to your shop, but I think the potters who utilize it the best are not the ones who have the quarterly flash sales, it is the potters who have a constant online shop available for the impulse buys. When someone is scrolling through their feed and the algorithm places one of your pots on their feed, they click through, click to your website and convert. That conversion can be a newsletter signup, clicking your show dates, or buying a pot from your shop. If you don't have any thing like this available and you are on instagram, then you need to make an adjustment.