oldlady

mark, i see that you have enough for a great party. when should we all come out? ps do i recognize the tiny one at the very bottom with your huge plates??

as new to kiln ownership, there are a number of things you should learn to watch for. first is that whenever the kiln has fired, the sitter turns it off but does not reset the dial to low. it remains on high until you change it. remember that. form the habit of changing the dials to off before you open the kiln. the dials indicate the stage of firing you are in so you can turn them up gradually. if you have a kitchen timer, set it for one hour when you start your kiln. if your kiln has sections and/or more than one heat dial, start the kiln with the bottom dial on low. use one hour on timer to then add the next dial upward to low. set timer for one hour. when you reach the last dial nearest the top, do the same, one more hour on low. once you reach the last dial, start again at the bottom dial and turn it to medium. set timer and repeat the steps you followed on the first trip upwards. repeat for high. if you are concerned with water steaming out in a bisque firing, hold a piece of glass or mirror just above the top vent hole and see if there is fog on the glass. i use the glass when the bottom dial goes to high. steam will stop coming out usually just around that stage, temp about 900 to 1100. this depends on the dampness of the greenware you have in the kiln. your turning up the heat gradually will probably have allowed the moisture to evaporate safely. if you stick WET greenware into the kiln, all bets are off. that is a bad thing to do, do not do it. dry your greenware. it is not fun to clean out a kiln full of damaged bisque and vacuum up each little particle from the element grooves. lots of work because you were not thinking. though i have never experienced a successful glaze firing as soon as 5 hours after starting the kiln, mr kielb has said many times that he has. glaze firing does not involve wet clay unless you have just now dipped a piece of bisque in very watery glaze and stuck it in the kiln immediately. that may cause the piece to blow up from the water in the ware. that will mean that the pieces in the kiln may be damaged beyond repair. even things on different shelves. i do not see any benefit in firing fast. you might look at some books about electric firing, jeff zamek has one with about that title. do not dismiss info in older books. they were written when your kiln was new technology. my first kiln was new in 1972 and i was absolutely dancing with joy when i got it. the shop where i bought it had several kiln disaster samples on the walls. one was a pile of white clay stuck to the kiln bottom, about a foot high. that person had not understood cone numbering, cone 06 is NOT the same as cone 6! i sold that kiln in 1990 to a lady who also danced.

do you have a photo of the clay you are using, fired to the temp you can reach? if it is darker than the test you try, the results will be darker. try finding a recipe that shows an example of the glaze fired onto a color of clay that is similar to yours. there are recipes online but i am not a computer whiz and do not know their names. someone here will chime in. whatever recipe you try, be sure to test the finished glaze in vinegar. i have been using dark green for many years and finally tested one i had been given and is in several books. it is called Oribe green. when i put a disk covered in that recipe with 5% copper carbonate into a plastic sandwich bag half full of white vinegar and hung it in my kitchen window, the glaze failed the test. after 3 days, a sediment that looked like sand was in the bottom of the bag and when i pulled the test out, the bottom half of the disk was much lighter than the top. that line where the vinegar stopped was very visible. recipes can have other faults as well. one was so beautiful but you could scratch the surface with another ceramic piece. no good. too soft. lots or testing for what you want.

might be too simple. why not use some cement waterproofing paint on the unglazed surface and then install the collar upside down. that way, the glaze will be at the bottom.

there is no controller on that kiln. it is fired manually (or WOmanually) using the switches to turn up the heat from low to medium to high. at that point, you trust the kiln sitter to turn it off when the cone you put in the sitter melts sufficiently and the kiln turns off.

when you make another one, you might want to tighten up the hole for the stick. you may never have found a wasp under the top of one of these jars.

linchimb, your supplier gave you very bad advice when he suggested you needed to grease any part of that new wheel. it should be his responsibility now, why not contact him or shimpo?

annie, read callie's post again. she refers to an "inclusion STAIN" not an inclusion clay. some stain manufacturers produce these stains. i do have some but do not remember details.

mnnaj, thank you for trying the "dunk it in water" suggestion. i have made this suggestion a lot of times and this is the first time anyone has actually done it and reported on it! so maybe someone else who is hesitant might just try it.

so glad you are safe. be very careful moving around those damaged buildings. of course you want to help out those whose homes and businesses are no more but take care to watch your footing especially. falling in that kind of damaged building materials can hurt you more than you might think.

get those shelves off the top as fast as you can. if you have never been around a kiln you might think it is made of brick so it is strong. that is SOFT brick and you can dent it with a fingernail. the top rests on the outer walls so putting anything on the center of the lid is asking for trouble with it. expensive trouble.

i had a hard time getting rid of uranium but it is long gone now. denice, when i was looking for property in florida it took me a long time to figure out why there were so many houses listing "new kitchen". when i looked at the property online there were lots of blue roofs scattered among the other colors. i thought it was just a florida color until i realized there had been 4 hurricanes through Pensacola that year and those were blue tarps.

cusher, it sounds as though you are firing by time only. are you using cones to discover what heat work has occurred? you have listed your bisque cone numbers in what appears to me reverse order. you do know that cone 05 is hotter than cone 06, right? and i could not find the end of your last sentence in the first post. i had the Touch N' Fire from paragon so maybe yours is entirely different.

rae, i have the airbrush and their compressor. i do not use them. i cannot understand how a tiny bottle is useful. the compressor gets very hot when i have tested it. i have never used it for anything other that to see how it works. there are only T-shirt artists using it in my area and i have never tried to learn from them. there were a couple of potters who used them way back in the 1970s. their work was very good, highly detailed nd precise. i hope you can find what you need to do that kind of art.

thanks for the explanation.

i do not understand the use of the word "degrade" in this instance. if you mean scraping the surface to sharpen the contrast between the colors, you can test it by very quickly dipping one of the pots into a bucket of water deep enough to submerge the whole thing. yes, i know that your first thought is that it will break the pot. if you use two hands and do it all at once, the very dry clay will probably suck that first dip immediately. yes, it will. than you can cover it in plastic and spray it with clean water after an hour or so. cover it again until you get it back to the right amount of dampness. scrape with a wide metal rib and you should be able to get the result you want. this is not something to be tackled by a person who is hesitant about using tools this way. it is probably easier to just make more of them.

thank you, peter!

could it be a lava-like glaze?

recently fired a very flat piece leaning against a kiln post. one of the square kind, i usually fire with the small triangular posts to save room on each shelf. thank you marcia selsor for showing how you lean your bisque pieces.

absolutely gorgeous! could not get more real than your finished piece, which i cannot wait to see. as a horse lover since age 3 i am thrilled to see what you can do. unfortunately, i am also allergic to horses and could never afford to keep even one. i did have ponies for several years when i lived on a large property. clicking LIKE is not enough admiration.

just a question for all you chemists. is this the result of hard water being used while throwing?

would you consider using the extra room as a kiln room? does it have outside access for venting exhaust? there are lots of studio designs if you can pull them out of the stored topics. a really great one was done not long ago by one of our members. it is owned by hitchmss and his title was Studio Design. lots of posts with lots of info. a dream building.

i can't remember who wanted that recipe but i do have it in the 3 inch thick binder. if you still want it, i will find it among the blues and write it out for you.

there is a wonderful glossy white glaze in one of my favorite pottery books. getting into pots by george and nancy wettlaufer. published in the 1970s. he explains glazes and how to adjust them in a very simple way. i use that one, named XS for extra shiny, in all my bowls and it is excellent. very white. my clay is little loafers from highwater. might not be available in Nowhere. XS glossy white cone 6 soda spar (kona f4 is what i have) 40 whiting 20 silica 325 20 ball clay (C&C is what i use) 10 zinc oxide 5 total 95 for white add zircopax 20 i always throw in 2% bentonite when i mix any glaze. any glaze because once was enough when i did not and created a solid rock that would not stay mixed.

what a lucky find!