rox54

It appears that the pits go all the way through to the body, so the bubbles are starting there. You say the body is rated for cone 5-10. That means it is immature at cone 5/6, not mature until 10. An alleged  wide firing range is one of the unfortunate fallacies perpetrated by the clay industry. My guess is that there is still stuff outgassing from the body at cone 6. If you are using a kiln with a digital controller, you can try a controlled cooling to allow the glaze to heal over any bubbles that are coming up.
As for the unexpected color, I'm not familiar with that glaze.

Neoprene disc stuck to the wheelhead with a little water for the vast majority of my pots, no clay wads. For bowls and platters wider than the wheelhead I use a  large batt that I glued high density upholstery foam to and put that on a damp Xiem BatMate knockoff. Never felt the need for a Giffin Grip.

your kiln manufacturer has a long history of getting the best out of it's kilns and providing simple controls for users.    why do you think your program is necessary and better than theirs?  and what is special about cone 09?   yours is the first post to mention it in all the years i have read almost every post.   are you glazing some special way that requires your bisque  so soft?  
once you fix the loading as suggested, just try what Neil, who is a kiln specialist and dealer, suggests. 

This is Porths, my first version of this sculpture I started way back about 2007, almost completed in 2009 before illness derailed my studio for a while.  At any rate, I FINALLY finished this boy last year and released him in a resin edition.  I've since gone on to do a 'hairy' Pasture Porthos who's a bit chunkier, and with more feather, thicker legs, long mane and swishy Fabio tail who's casting in a resin edition this year.
Anyway, I've been busting butt to make MOLDS for these two versions of my Porthos sculpture.  Currently I am having the hairy Pasture Porthos molded and cast in England in fine bone china, though I'm also about to start testing slip and settlers for fine bone china pieces here in my studio later this year.  Meanwhile I'm focusing first on using finely ball milled earthenware with talc to cast some pieces.  This first one I've molded right here in studio is what we call Curio scale, a large mini in size.  He's my test cast to see if my mold worked (it did first try!) and to help me figure out how I want to rework and clean up my mold pieces to work even better.  Then I'll be making rubber molds starting next week of each plaster mold piece so I'll have a master from which to cast as many plaster replacement molds as I ever will want, later.
So here's my first ceramic bisque of Porthos with his original docked tail version (mane flights to be added later), an American Percheron with tail bows.

Do other people smell it, or just you? When I had Covid, I smelled smoke like cigarettes, but no one smokes. If other people, smell it, do your neighbors have the same smell?

A thought I’ll share: As soon as I get the powder into the water bucket I put the lid on and go do something else for a while. It lets things get hydrated before mixing, but mostly I do it to reduce dust in the air. 

Hi Paula and welcome to the forum.
Glaze blisters are one of the harder things to figure out the cause of and remedy. Blisters can be from the glaze application, materials, the firing, the claybody, the application or a combination of these. Given when you refired to a cone lower it healed most of the blisters is a good sign. Do you use cones to verify your firing and confirmed you aren't overfiring? Have you tried an unfired piece  at a cone lower or only a previously fired piece? This is where I would start trying to solve this. Since we don't have the recipe(s) for the problem glazes we can't offer suggestions for altering those but the claybody, firing and application method could be areas to look at.
In this months CM there is a really good article on glaze blisters by Jeff Zamek, it is behind a paywall but you can access 3 free articles a month. It's well worth a read. Link to it here.
 

I am not a hold person as to me it simply adds heatwork. In a practical sense there are folks who fire one cone lower but add a hold to get to the next cone heatwork without the peak temperature. In that case firing to cone five with a fifteen to twenty minute hold often gets one to cone six. (Usually verified with cones)
Why do that? Some glazes do not like higher peak temperatures. Some underglazes change color significantly with peak temperature. It is a pretty functional way to fire a cone to two cones max higher without hitting the actual peak temperature. 
Firing higher or for longer has never healed pinholes for me, often made them worse. Drop some temperature and hold however has helped on s some of my pinhole situations.
whatever works for you and your desired glaze results is likely the best answer. Whatever is done, I strongly suggest  always nice to have cones in place so you genuinely know how much heatwork was done. As to suggested time, 15-20 minutes generally gets you to the next cone.

"Climate Change" : Goldfinch,  budding lilac tree, & post-snow/freezing rain iced branches 1/24/24, in NH. I do some photography.  

What a delight to hear more about the lives of people I interact with regularly but don’t really know at all.
I’m an art teacher at a public school (22+ years). It’s unusual in that it’s a k-12 school. I have to explore all sorts of creative endeavors just to be good at my job. A few of them drew me in far beyond what I needed to teach the subject.
Clay is where my heart is, I got a BFA and MFA in ceramics before my teacher life. A significant part of “extracurricular” creative activity still revolves around it. I like to make the tools I use and I want them to be as beautiful as my pots. The wood for handles and ribs comes from what I collect and I will use a branch or plank or block I harvested over lumber from the store at every turn.
The students got me into paper making, poor things didn’t know I was going to make them chop apart plants, boil them in alkali, then spend hours beating them to a literal pulp. I’ve made a lot of paper of my own since then. Coptic stitched a few journals too, @GEP. 
A serious creative anomaly happened when I decided it shouldn’t be so hard to distill essential oils from plants. I was wrong, but the process relies on third world technology and I’m pretty fluent in that. A couple years later I had an efficiently working still and system and obtained essential oils from the most interesting plants growing locally.
When I learn about something I get more interested in it. It’s a blessing, and a curse. I’m always up to something.

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. 

When working with students in the early years I had quite a bit of trouble with students not getting tight joins in slab construction, coil or when joining handles. At the time we were using slip as I did not know anything else for a proper join. I was teaching about compression to make certain the pieces stayed together, but still had problems with the joins students made. In the late 80's I came across reference to "magic water" in a Ceramics Monthly. It took me a while to decide to try it, but when I did I found that overnight my problems with joins in the student pots dropped dramatically. I also found that the joins were cleaner, and overall there were fewer gaps in all of the constructions. If you are not using it. . . I would recommend it.
 
 
best,
Pres

+1 for caring! My experience - this is likely a joint failure, not necessarily glaze related. I like you, worried about the same things and once I had a similar handle crack decided to knock the handles off on a handful of my bisqued mugs and even several glazed. What I found was some handles were attached so securely that the parent material or clay would fail and the joint material remain intact on only the best made joints. From that point on - I spent quite a bit of time on making sure to compress these joints very firmly during construction to be sure the material around and the joint itself was every bit as dense as the parent clay. When I did this, the joint would be as strong as the parent clay which was the best that could be done for that joint.  If I needed a stronger joint for extra rough use, then it became larger but always paying extra attention that the joint was fully compressed and attached well.
A few more well compressed attachments  later, knocking the handles off revealed the parent clay material would now fail before the joint actually would. From that point on I never had a failure, and often when tested by impact, the side of the mug would fail and not the joint. Good glaze helped, but glaze is too brittle to save a weaker made joint. Never had a critical joint fail after that. Typical well made and well attached joint below. This joint is fairly large but these are very custom mugs. It takes significant force but the cup will fail before this joint will. Always compress critical joints so the material is uniform strength was the lesson for me.
 
 

Yes, Pres, thank you for your work! I don't contribute much, but I learn a lot here. I check the forums daily and pick up stuff I didn't even know I was missing! When I first started pottery, 10 years ago, I was self taught and learned a lot from Facebook's Clay Buddies group, but I guess I have advanced to needing more technical info from the experts and I can find that here. Thank you all!

Yes, Pres, thank you for your work! I don't contribute much, but I learn a lot here. I check the forums daily and pick up stuff I didn't even know I was missing! When I first started pottery, 10 years ago, I was self taught and learned a lot from Facebook's Clay Buddies group, but I guess I have advanced to needing more technical info from the experts and I can find that here. Thank you all!

It’s worth noting that Etsy selling has never been a way for most users to make a full time living, but many do use it as a supplement or as one of many income streams. Also, don’t follow their advice on pricing your work. Because of how they structure their fees, you’ll have to start with your base price and add all the assorted percentages they charge. Use caution when using their forum for advice on running a business there. Many of the seller communities labour under the (incorrect) assumption that high prices will drive away customers, and that you have to have frequent sales and discounts. None of that is true. Cheap prices draw in deal hunters who will not treat you well. 

An additional thought on Rhodes: he wrote several books, Clay and Glazes may be the most well known but he also wrote "Stoneware and Porcelain" and "Pottery Forms".
Our high school library had all three books and I poured over them endlessly as an impassioned wheel thrower. What made Pottery Forms so unique was that Rhodes often showed pottery shapes in profile. Meaning...he would cut the pot in half to show the wall thickness. That really sent home the message that a well thrown pot has an even thickness clay wall. (To prevent cracking, mostly, and warping.) I don't think too many other books had this element? 
What the profile shots also did was send home the message that crafting a good pot involves two processes: throwing the pot and trimming the pot.
 

I don't think you have been working in a dusty atmosphere long enough to do much damage.    When I started taking ceramic classes in the early 1970's  no one wore masks or gloves and the professors never talked about them and silicosis.  The studio was in a old football stadium from the early 1900s,  no windows,  no heat or air conditioning.   When clay was being mixed you couldn't even see there was so much dust.   Huge gas kilns were fired right next doors to the throwing room.   Most students weren't there eight hours a day like clay workers,  I am 71 and still here and don't have any lung problems and have been around other silicosis situations.   I worked as a dental technician for 6 year,  had exposure to different kinds of dust.   I live in Kansas wind and dust storms quite common.  I take all of the precautions in my studio now and have for years once I found out it was a problem.   You could have a doctor check things like your breathing capacity.  I have Multiple Sclerosis because of bad genes,  I always felt bad that everyone had to slow down for me.   Now that everyone is in there 70's they all have health problems and they are just as slow as I am.  You can't live your life in fear of what might happen,  you don't know  long your life will be.  We had a young friend killed a couple of years ago walking into work.  He was on his cellphone the guy who ran over him was on his cellphone.    You never know.     Denice

I don’t believe I have his number but I will double check our email chains. I am thinking health as well and hope he is ok. That was also another reason I posted as I figured someone here might know. 
 
If someone has it and wouldn’t mind sharing ( @Roberta12 ?) it and can message me that would be great. 

I haven't purchased anything from him in over a year, but he has made 4 tools for me over the years without any issues and I was always pleased. He always consulted with me about a personalized fit for the handle etc and seemed to take pride in his work and packaged them well. He also repaired a tool that I had dropped on a cement floor. I paid as a "friend" too, but understood it as a way to avoid PayPal fees. I wonder if there is something wrong with his health? I'm sorry this happened to you.

Thanks. The angle and lighting of the photo was playing tricks on my eyes. I would say that the size of the ring is at least partially to blame. It's adding a lot of mass to the bottom so you have a wide thin platter with a thick area at the bottom. Clay prefers to be evenly thick throughout. There would be far less stress on the piece if the foot ring was much less bulky, like 1/4" to 3/8" thick. Also be sure you're attaching the ring when the slab and ring are at similar moisture level. It's also possible that the platter cracked or was at least stressed at the lip before it ever went into a kiln, and finally opened up in the glaze firing. But because the crack extends all the way into the foot ring it's probably because of the added mass there.

Oooh, I like all those too, even Simon, haha, "Oh Hi there, how are you, potters, friends, utubers?"
Ton a day Isaac Button, classic; first of four segments https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmG5NOmQy_4
Michael Casson, here's one of his - there are a few others https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19YjNGEtUYo (I like his book too)
Still watching this one 'bout once a month,
Genji Shimizu (artist name Hokujoh) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybb-HhSrtxA&t=8s   NHK Ceramic Treasures series - some great stuff here https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUCSFSJSz477hmqwO98PWp940W_voWW7W  Clinton Pottery clip https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bs2tUxKQIic&t=70s
Tim See - not seeing many potters anchoring hand on the away side to center - works for him https://www.youtube.com/user/timseepots
...where's the German lady, and the Swedish lady, hrrrm… (still looking)
Add Bill Van Gilder https://www.youtube.com/user/vangilderpottery/videos
 

I really enjoy goldmark galleries features on artists, here's a link to their 14 short films on potters: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFvUht41DkhImM4CVUwsE7r4WVJqN6V8q
Here's some of my favorite channels as well
Hsinchuen lin: https://www.youtube.com/user/hsinchuen
Simon leach (yes THAT leach): https://www.youtube.com/user/sleachpots
Ingleton pottery: https://www.youtube.com/user/youdanxxx
Matthew Kelly pottery: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC19npAMIfG47wgdrFX--4zw
 
And of course the obligatory shameless self promotion of my channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRyK3g9rImtTJfaI5iGAP4w
I'm in no way the same league as the ones above me, they are all seasoned professional teachers and you'll learn a lot watching them.

I taught for 36 years, much of it Ceramics day to day. Not really work of the physical type that potters do, but still a lot of clay, wedging, throwing, demonstrations, lectures, and coaching beginners and intermediates. Retirement brought on some regular throwing, lots of bowling, and other activities that taxed me. Now in my mid 70s I find that it is easier to get tired, delay going out to the shop, or to not take that kayak out as often. Luckily, even though I have quite a bit of arthritis in my hands and other areas, I still enjoy working with the clay and creating one of a kind pieces. . . for my self, or my vision. So what if I make less, there is no need there to sell, but still the need to make . . . hope to continue on til gone.
 
best,
Pres

This!   I noticed many people at the new studio I am at, many are sanding pieces with expensive diamond pads as a matter of routine.  i was taught to fix roughness early on,     sanding  finished pieces is a last effort