Babs

And is there a community studio which could fire your students work? Linking school with a community resource , the results displayed in school foyer??? Softly softly catch the monkey!! One comment re my boys group was how quiet the room was from the corridor not me the dragon, but absorption of students in what they were trying to acheive. .. @Benzine can you help

Great, you guys. It's about development of the whole person, the brain is overloaded with info from screens and the neg. side of this is evident. Good luck. Run a clay session for the Staff!!

Hard one, could bring it in as Design and Tech component of the curriculum. Depending on where you are, you may find you have to fire over the weekend... Such a sad outlook, local schools don't even have a qualified art teacher atm because of that attitude. The pottery room and contents sold off after decades of a highly diverse art program. I taught a class of recalcitrant students, mostly boys. They were coming in at lunchtimes to wprk on their projects, ironically one was making fish head....bookends! All drawn out in the design books prior to start. Have you colleagues in area where you can take images of students engagememt in the processes involved? Could compare with other areas of curr...English without novel reading, etc Not very helpful, keep plugging at it. The need for folk to leave school with healthy life time leisure pursuits, during lockdown, thousands took up ceramics .Introduction at school important for giving confidence required to approach these pursuits....

Do you know the recipe of the glazs?.just that there is a practice of once fired pots which doez just rhat, appIurs glaze to an unfured clay. It could go into a glaze firing if it is possible to slow the glaze fire down till after 600°C. Or making sureno glaze on the base, bisque fire as usual then put through a glaze fire. Or with mask on, sand off the glaze.

When you turn on the kiln your controller may flick through a couple ofessages one of those, on mine is the thermocouple type, mine reads before I touch the buttons :Fail, tcR which is the thermocouple Type R. Then I go to the programme I want. The manual you need,if you haven't got one , is for the controller, not the kiln. Good luck, very frustrating.

Can you read back, or have logged the actual temp reached/ hr? Does the controller signal an error code?

Do you keep a log?

Did you have a bank of cones on each shelf?

Is it pos with your bisque you put Cone 4,5,6 instead of cone 04,05,06? How did your bisque take tthe glaze? If below cone 06, as you have indicated, then it would suck up the glaze resulting in a different glaze thickness.

It will just burn out when you bisque properly. I use candle wax all the time. A local church gives me candle ends. What it has shown you is probably your poor ventilation. If the candlewax is dyed the fumes may be more toxic.

Ego got in the way of best practice, or lack of education couldbe tge go. go above inspector level and state your case but it may backfire and they will inspect your propert forever...how does this sit with insurance cover?

Just absorbing what I can. Hamer and Hamer, I think, names Mg as a "catalyst " at lower temps and a flux at higher...have to look up the definitions of those terms in chemistry. Lay talk, catalyst "encourages" a reaction, flux allows reaction to occur at a lower temp?

Reason I suggested deflocculated slip is at the same consistency, it will contain much less water and so less shrinkage as it dries, and thus less cracking, also what Callie wrote above re strength of bond. Any mending will have to really dry out before refiring or going straight to glazing, I'd try one panda first. Beautiful pandas btw.

You made these? Cracks where arm is joined may be a drying, difference in moisture of pieces at time of joining. What slip are you using. May need to go for a deflocculated slip or "magic water". Solid legs , cracking where meeting body, again s moisture imbalance when drying. Might need to pierce the legs from feet up many times with skewers after making. Dry long and slow in a container. These have been bisqued? Can use a product "SPOOZE" or some folk use a commercial product. Need to rebisque

If you are touching up underglaze after the bisque then if not dry as rest of pot, those areas withh take glaze differently. I underglaze just after trimming, spritzing the entire pot ,inside and outfor an even acceptance of the u.g. I add frit to a couple of blues and a black. Not knowing the products you are using, I don't know if this is relevant. When I don't add the frit , the glaze doesn't "meld" with the underglaze, it "crumples" and crawls. Rims are tricky for the moisture though, and grabbing more than their share of u.g. therefore.

It looks too thick, Some underglaze colours I have to add frit to so glaze performs as expected. If only on rims it may be that your rims are drier than rest of pot and underglaze doesn't attach , notnoticed until glaze firing often.

What kind of wire?

@PeterHThis is a great video. The thickened slip John is making will stand up and maintain its own shape. If the slip the OP , @s6x, wants needs to flow over existing texture, it doesn't need re thickening but testing will need to happen to get the required fit to the clay body being used.

If you make a very thick slip, then make it desired fluidity by using Darvan or sodium silicate, just drop by drop, then with less water involved there will be less shrinkage. Too much darvan will make it go clumpy. Also, spray your sculpture with a fine mist of water prior to adding slip to it will help also.

Absolutely and I think that tiger's dont change stripes midstream, keeps the brain and body sorted, and you dont know the word "bored" either. Keep creating.

Glad you told us you were downsizing and slowing down!!! Inspirational!

Anyone mixing or stirring glazes where your glazed ware is sitting? Any granules in your glazes? I can understand the black brown bits coming from the kiln lid or edges but the specks of blue suggest contamination coming from elsewhere. A fugitive lurking in the kiln would be more likely to tint a glaze than speckle it, imo

@Ben xyz you can apply the underglaze to your unfired pots, bisque, then glaze. No need to rebisque if do this, more economical.

Maybe post a pic of your efforts, and what you'd like to achieve.

The above advice is sound but unless clay is also v low fired clay, doeant explain the unglazed ware sticking together at cone 4, @Lainer, did they distort also? Bloat? What is the firing range recommended fir yiur clay?