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JohnnyK

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Everything posted by JohnnyK

  1. Since it is difficult to keep the iron particles in suspension, maybe it would be better to spray the glaze without the iron and then sprinkle the iron particles with a salt shaker onto your pot while the glaze is still wet...
  2. Is the wheel head metal (usually aluminum) or a composite? My old CI wheel has a composite head and there is no way I would take a heat gun or torch to it.
  3. Your best bet here would be to fire the piece to ^10...then paint it with the colors you want with a final clear coat. You wouldn't even have to use Hi-temp paints this way. I saw some really cool looking pieces that a potter had on display and when I asked how she got the brilliant colors, she said she just used acrylic spray paints with a final clear finish!
  4. Over the past 8 years my wife and I have contributed to our local PBS TV Art Auction. My contributions have been photography and Raku pottery, while hers was a "Wine lover's Birdhouse" which was a birdhouse whose walls were covered with wine labels and the roof with corks, the perch was a corkscrew. This year we are going to collaborate. I'm going to make a Horsehair Raku lamp base and she is going to do a lampshade covered with wine labels. We've done this in the past with a very large wine bottle as the base and her label covered shade. it will be interesting to see what kind of reaction we get to the project.
  5. Is the wood form straight or tapered? In the photo it looks like it is wider at the top than the bottom. How was the body of the wood fabricated and how is it attached to the base? WHat are the dimensions of the wood cylinder? Can you send a photo of the wood form without the clay?
  6. Two hours well spent. My wife commented about how Clarice seemed to be acting weird when she got into the coulor room and was just gazing at the bright colors...I said that I thought she was being inspired, just like I am when I look at my own colors for glazing and layering...
  7. If I understand correctly, if you have a VPN (Virtual Private Network), you can decide to operate it out of a Canadian location and should be able to get the Canadian broadcasts unless it is run on a cable channel for which you have to pay.
  8. Here are my squirrel tail brushes. Lots of roadkill in my area, so source material is easy to get, and I have a pretty good stand of bamboo for the handles...
  9. Welcome to the Forum, Ariel...Are you sure it was ^06 and not ^6, and are we talking F or C temps? What does the owner's manual indicate for the Error 1?
  10. I noticed, @Min, that the tool you ordered is made of tungsten steel where the Bison tools are tungsten carbide. So I thought I'd do a little research and I found some interesting info here: Tungsten Steel vs Tungsten Carbide | Be-cu.com. It may or not influence your choice.
  11. Why not try making ceramic handles? I think it might be easier than making wood handles...
  12. Glad to hear that you are finally kinda retiring. I was in the remodeling business for almost 40 years and I kinda retired from that business just before the fires that destroyed Paradise, CA, and a lot of northern CA. Because of the demand for contractors to help rebuild what seemed to be all of northern California, I could have gotten back in and made another fortune but decided to stay out of it. Retirement has been good because it gives me the opportunity to pursue my pottery and farming enterprises as well as some charity work with a local food locker. Enjoy the respite!
  13. I learned how much I really liked working with clay when I took a Learning Exchange class at my local ceramics supplier/studio at the behest of one of my remodeling clients who was still doing slip-casting classes for young 4-H members at the fine old age of 87. In that wheel-throwing class, which ran one night a week for 6 weeks plus all the studio time you could fit in when the store was open, we were only expected to produce 4 pieces of pottery. I made 20. I guess I liked it so much that I went on to take Ceramics I, II, and Raku at a local junior college. My professor was a young 30 or 40 something with fiery red hair that fit her personality. Her name was Ianna Frisby (toss that one around) and she was encouraging enough to prompt me to open my own little studio where I'm happy to produce all kinds of functional ware that I sell to help pay for the habit!
  14. WOW! After reading all this, I just checked my little library of about 40 books and found a copy of Clay and Glazes for the Potter...I guess I'll have to take a look and see what it's all about. It was given to me by an acquaintance who was into clay for awhile but drifted away from clay and turned to glass and fabrics...lucky me!
  15. All good to hear, Neil. The original connections were screws, nuts and washers through a loop on the element and a crimp connector on the feed wire. Euclids provided me heavy brass couplings with stainless steel clamp screws. As for the feeders, I cut the loop off the crimp connector leaving the crimped portion on the end of the wire. The connections are solid and the feeders stick out away from the connectors. Ther is plenty of room in the well-ventilated box cover for the wires. On the next firing, I'll check the connectors to see if there are any problems.
  16. I learn something every day... Is there any way to salvage the single wire portion? It is too stiff to twist another wire to it like from the factory. What about tying another piece of wire to the singleton with some finer nichrome? The difference in resistance is about 0.2 Ohms, which calculates to about a 1 Amp increase in current...
  17. Opened the kiln yesterday after running a "break-in" ^6 firing after installing new Euclids coils. Looking forward to my first bisque firing later this week and then on to glaze firing a few moonshine jugs for a customer!

  18. I just replaced the elements, which was an interesting task. The coils were about 3" too long, so I had to straighten and shorten the overall length. Man, I didn't realize how strong that coil wire is. It took quite an effort to do the straightening, Anyway, I got it done. I installed 4 shelves with posts and 2 cone sets, one near the bottom peephole and one near the top. It seems to me that the bottom of the kiln is running slightly cooler than the top and the top set (which is in the front) is dead on for cone 6. The firing was the pre-programmed ^6... The next run is going to be a bisque firing, then on to glaze firing. Comments anyone?
  19. Great news here regarding the Amaco Ancient Copper! Check out this new article by Tony Hansen at Digitalfire! You can make your own Ancient Copper brushing glaze (digitalfire.com)
  20. SO would it be a good idea to put 3 or 4 shelves in with cones at each level to check the heat distribution? How about firing to ^6 where I usually glaze fire to?
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