GEP

Custar is back now Dick at least from Laguna locations

I have been spending a lot of time and energy replacing my Gerstley Borate glazes. The new ones are coming along, but they just don’t have the same glow and magic. I am trying to push the limits of “how much boron can I get away with?”
The good news is that switching to Fabi Talc in place of Texas Talc has been seamless. 

I have been spending a lot of time and energy replacing my Gerstley Borate glazes. The new ones are coming along, but they just don’t have the same glow and magic. I am trying to push the limits of “how much boron can I get away with?”
The good news is that switching to Fabi Talc in place of Texas Talc has been seamless. 

I have been spending a lot of time and energy replacing my Gerstley Borate glazes. The new ones are coming along, but they just don’t have the same glow and magic. I am trying to push the limits of “how much boron can I get away with?”
The good news is that switching to Fabi Talc in place of Texas Talc has been seamless. 

I have been spending a lot of time and energy replacing my Gerstley Borate glazes. The new ones are coming along, but they just don’t have the same glow and magic. I am trying to push the limits of “how much boron can I get away with?”
The good news is that switching to Fabi Talc in place of Texas Talc has been seamless. 

Juried exhibitions or invitationals through galleries have never netted me any sales. They can be a nice ego rub, which has its own value, but that value isn’t monetary IME. 
Juried fairs or markets however, are a good thing. Juries can help put together a crowd of compatible artists and quality of work, which helps get it in front of people who are interested in such things. 

Juried gallery exhibitions may get you one or two sales beyond the piece you have in the show, but mostly it's just a resume builder that may help you get into other galleries or build your social media account a little. Art fairs will definitely build sales, because you can show so much more work to so many more people.

No.  Not exhibitions.  Even donations do not "generate great marketing"  (that's what the people asking will say)  If I donate, it's because I believe in the cause.  Not because it will be a marketing tool for me.  
Juried shows are a different situation for me.  A show versus an exhibition.  
Roberta

Never in my 50 years in business has it helped with the business sales wise. Donations same deal only give to my causes.

For me, no... however, other things have happened for me locally. I have submitted my horsehair Raku pottery to my local PBS station's annual art auction, which is a juried event, and have been accepted all 3 times and all my entries had garnered at least 3 times my valued prices. The last time around I had won a Juror's award which got me an interview and article in a local news outlet but did not generate new business. I plan on continuing my donations to the art auction because each entry gets me a little more notoriety since the work gives me 6 minutes of TV exposure during the auction and it is good enough to be accepted for the auction. Someday it may lead to greater things!

Just heard this -The owner of Kemper Tools has sold the business. New owner has to move the factory as the property has sold as well. Not sure if this will stay  as a domestic business and what will be made  in terms of the tool line. They made so many I would not be surprized that that line is trimmed down . Pricing may change as well.. It's funny as I noticed Bailey has a sale going on Kemper now which is odd. My guess is there will be a time period that these tools will not be in production as well. The good news is Kemper will be around in some sense in the future. 

I threw my first  pots yesterday after a 8. week break. I had a tarsal tunnel surgery on right foot and out of cast now and in a boot for a month. I got off crutches  and knee scooter about 4 days ago and am taking baby steps towards walking again. Going to make some small stuff this am as well. Slowly getting back to it. Lots of PT and doing my PT 3 times a day then ICE and infrared light. Compression sleeve 99% on time as well . Wound is about 5 inchs long and coming along nicely. This surgery was a real setback for 8 weeks.
I have a large order to fill this spring and am just starting to get to it. I will be driving my self again within a day-ya hoo
PS tarsel tunnel is just like carpel tunnel on wrist only on the foot. Both by feet have it. I shosse the worst right foot to do this year -if it gets better in 3-6 months I will conside the other one. Right now  that sound really like a bad idea but once I;m healed up and if it works then I will think more about it on other foot.Surgery was a 4 hour trip away one way. Specialized doctor for this type of surgery of course.

In my experience, self-supporting cones can stick to the shelf if you overfire them just a little. They’re not supposed to, but it happens! As @Bill Kielb said, if you kiln wash your shelves, this is not a problem. I do not kiln wash my shelves, so I have had to chisel off some stuck cone bits. 
My solution to this is to use cone plaques, the kind that have holes in one side for holding non-self-supporting cones at the correct angle. I use the underside that doesn’t have holes, put kiln wash on that surface, and place my self-supporting cones on them. Any small piece of old or broken kiln furniture will work too.
 

In my experience, self-supporting cones can stick to the shelf if you overfire them just a little. They’re not supposed to, but it happens! As @Bill Kielb said, if you kiln wash your shelves, this is not a problem. I do not kiln wash my shelves, so I have had to chisel off some stuck cone bits. 
My solution to this is to use cone plaques, the kind that have holes in one side for holding non-self-supporting cones at the correct angle. I use the underside that doesn’t have holes, put kiln wash on that surface, and place my self-supporting cones on them. Any small piece of old or broken kiln furniture will work too.
 

In my experience, self-supporting cones can stick to the shelf if you overfire them just a little. They’re not supposed to, but it happens! As @Bill Kielb said, if you kiln wash your shelves, this is not a problem. I do not kiln wash my shelves, so I have had to chisel off some stuck cone bits. 
My solution to this is to use cone plaques, the kind that have holes in one side for holding non-self-supporting cones at the correct angle. I use the underside that doesn’t have holes, put kiln wash on that surface, and place my self-supporting cones on them. Any small piece of old or broken kiln furniture will work too.
 

Ok, now download the firing log and feed that sweet thang into @jay_klay_studio's graphing program to visually see the tracks of the 3 sections. And if you really want to have some fun, add another 9999 drop all the way down to 100 after your regularly programmed cool to log how looooonnnggggg it takes for the last several hundred degrees. Several times over the years I've printed the extended graph of a few kilns as a teachable moment for the students of the virtue of patience, i.e., "Can I get my piece tomorrow?" "No, next Friday."

I usually fire my kilns at night so I don't really see what's happening with actual temps in the kiln, but today I started it up in the morning and was in the studio in the evening and got to see exactly what was happening during the cooling cycle. I do a slightly-slow cooling cycle to even out the results in my 3 kilns because they all cool at drastically different rates due to their sizes. I do a drop from the peak down to 2000F, then cool at 175F/hr down to 1500F. This gives me identical results from all 3 of my kilns. This firing I'm talking about here is in my 10 cubic foot L&L EQ2827-3, which has 3 zones, and was packed very tight in the middle. I was surprised at just how much slower the middle cools compared to the top and bottom. This photo shows how it's going part way through the initial drop from peak temp to 2000F:

As you can see, the middle and the top are nowhere close to each other. In a normal firing segment, a 73 degree difference would stop the firing with an error code. So why isn't it doing that here? It's because the cooling rate is set at 9999, or full speed. Any time you use 9999, whether it's climbing or dropping, the controller lets the kiln do its thing and doesn't care if the sections aren't even. Firing up or down at 9999 is the fastest, but you sacrifice evenness. As the temp continues to drop, we see this:

Here you can see that the top section (TC1) has started firing again. The set point for this segment was 2000F, at which point it should start cooling at 175F/hr, yet the top section passed that by about 20 degrees before the relay kicked on and the controller stopped the drop. Why did it let it get so far below the set point? Because it's averaging the 3 zones. Once the average of the 3 zones hits the set point it will start to fire each section again as needed to match the set point.
I get a lot of questions from customers about error codes and cooling cycles. The biggest problem is that the kiln can't always keep up with the programmed cooling rate. There are a number of firing schedules out there on the internet that people are trying that use a rate of 600F/hr or more for the fast drop portion of the cooling cycle, and many kilns simply cannot cool that fast, especially the middle section. When you have a specific rate programmed, the controller will send out an error code if the kiln can't keep up with that rate. So if you want a really fast drop you should use 9999F/hr, not a specific rate. For most people doing slow cooling with cone 6 work it won't matter if the sections are not totally even during the drop. If you do need more precision, like if you're firing crystalline work and it's important that you don't overshoot any target temps, then you'll want to put in a slower drop rate that the kiln can actually keep up with, and the controller will keep the sections even and not overshoot set points.

Your new teapot is unlikely to cause you any harm, short of breaking it and cutting yourself on a shard accidentally. It doesn’t have any warnings about lead or cadmium, nor do I see any colours or textures in that line of work that would lead me to suspect any use of those materials. If you’re super nervous about anything and want some reassurance, you can get lead test kits for pottery on the ‘zon, but I’d be surprised if this item came back positive.
In the product description from your link, where it says Material Icon, there’s a number of little care instruction and definition buttons. When you click on “Iron in Powder” (likely a translation vagary) it points out that there may be some dark specks that appear in the final piece from iron impurities in the clay. There’s going to be considerably less iron that could possibly come out of this teapot than, say, a cast iron frying pan.
Glaze doesn’t work the way you’re describing, no. Whoever gave you that description may have been thinking of earthenware that was painted with some kind of lead bearing decorative slip or underglaze, but even that has some dubious underlying assumptions. 
First, not all pottery is made in the same way. Without getting overly technical, different kinds of clay that people use in different parts of the world will have different levels of porosity, firing temperatures, and a bunch of other stuff. So items made in Japan won’t use the same techniques or materials that get used in, Mexico, or the US, or even Canada. And studio pottery will not be made with the same materials/techniques as industrially produced items.  But in general, glaze is used on a clay body to make it stronger, and to make it more waterproof and easier to clean than just the clay surface would be alone. Also, it makes it pretty!
****IF**** a piece of pottery were to contain lead or cadmium, it won’t be in the clay body. Those metals will typically be present either in an underglaze decoration (they make pretty reds, yellows, oranges and some greens), in some forms of china paint decoration, or in the glaze itself. It’s important to note that a lead free clear over a lead or cadmium bearing underglaze **might** not block all lead bleed through should those materials be present. It’s also important to remember that not all yellow/red/orange/green underglazes or glazes will have any of those things in them. There’s lots of ways to get those colours that don’t involve those metals, and are safe for daily use. 
 
 

I like to say “even potters need a hobby,” and mine is bookbinding! I make hand-bound notebooks, sketchbooks, and journals. I love paper, cloth, adhesives, and sewing. My graphic design training taught me about pages/sheets/signatures, so I get to use my previous career’s knowledge. 

For most of the 20+ years I’ve had my basement studio, I’ve been using the same 3 base recipes. A dry matte, a semi-matte, and a glossy base. I have 1 variation on the dry matte, 2 variations of the semi-matte, and 2 variations of the glossy. Which equals 5 total. Which means I totally agree with your goal to keep 5 glazes. 
I also agree with @Marilyn T that having fewer glazes is beneficial to you, in terms of artistic growth. 

For most of the 20+ years I’ve had my basement studio, I’ve been using the same 3 base recipes. A dry matte, a semi-matte, and a glossy base. I have 1 variation on the dry matte, 2 variations of the semi-matte, and 2 variations of the glossy. Which equals 5 total. Which means I totally agree with your goal to keep 5 glazes. 
I also agree with @Marilyn T that having fewer glazes is beneficial to you, in terms of artistic growth. 

For most of the 20+ years I’ve had my basement studio, I’ve been using the same 3 base recipes. A dry matte, a semi-matte, and a glossy base. I have 1 variation on the dry matte, 2 variations of the semi-matte, and 2 variations of the glossy. Which equals 5 total. Which means I totally agree with your goal to keep 5 glazes. 
I also agree with @Marilyn T that having fewer glazes is beneficial to you, in terms of artistic growth. 

I like to say “even potters need a hobby,” and mine is bookbinding! I make hand-bound notebooks, sketchbooks, and journals. I love paper, cloth, adhesives, and sewing. My graphic design training taught me about pages/sheets/signatures, so I get to use my previous career’s knowledge. 

I like to say “even potters need a hobby,” and mine is bookbinding! I make hand-bound notebooks, sketchbooks, and journals. I love paper, cloth, adhesives, and sewing. My graphic design training taught me about pages/sheets/signatures, so I get to use my previous career’s knowledge. 

I like to say “even potters need a hobby,” and mine is bookbinding! I make hand-bound notebooks, sketchbooks, and journals. I love paper, cloth, adhesives, and sewing. My graphic design training taught me about pages/sheets/signatures, so I get to use my previous career’s knowledge.