PeterH

Two ideas you may find useful. 1) Stain the cracks to make them more visible (you may have more than you think). 2) Use a thermal stress-test to make "latent" cracks appear sooner. ... one from Digitalfire https://digitalfire.com/test/iwct

Textured clay, black , colour, sand down bumps leaving white?

I'm in awe. At first it looked like white dots against a coloured background, looking closer the coloured areas seem to have black edges where they meet the white. Hard to see how that can be achieved easily. - Two-coloured highly registered printing (e.g. on Min's transfer paper)? - Black under the coloured, and the white dots sanded down?

I think that's Sonja Brough https://www.instagram.com/sonjabrough/ I don't have an Instagram account to explore, but there is some sort of video at Chaotic Prettiness https://www.instagram.com/p/CwE4H7joZy4/ ... which may show pieces under construction

Weight if dry ingredients are involved. But volumetric mixing (of made-up glazes) for test-tiles is a great idea ... providing you use a syringe with a decent scale.

@Jmvelezz Finally ... Transformation of Six Leaves Glaze to Contemporary Ceramic Bases on the Taoism Characteristics http://ithesis-ir.su.ac.th/dspace/handle/123456789/2977 ... click on 60155902.pdf near the bottom of the page. ... which seems to be link to http://ithesis-ir.su.ac.th/dspace/bitstream/123456789/2977/1/60155902.pdf ... which looks like the same link that doesn't work when you use it directly! I've not found any English-language page at the university that would let me report the problems to the universities IT department. I suspect that they have got their permissions in a twist. PS You may want to remove the watermark before printing. How to do it depends on your system. Start with a google for something like print pdf without watermark. Don't have the file any more, but think I uncompressed the pdf file then edited it directly (on Linux possibly using pdftk & vi).

Haven't watched the original video closely enough to know if it's got the few seconds of cable-winding info shown here: PS Probably worth trolling though all his YouTube videos https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Dale+Savoie+ ... which seem to have a lot of extra detail

A little googling if it's of any help. This seems to be the video, and readers comments about the email address being non-functional. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VC0QXALQT_M A discussion https://cone6pots.ning.com/video/home-made-slab-roller Another users experiences http://mudismymedium.blogspot.com/2012/04/slab-roller.html ... which comments on the non-functioning email & web references, and gives https://www.biggovtsucks.com/docs/SlabRollerModified.pdf https://www.biggovtsucks.com/docs/SlabRollercuttingchart.pdf Good hunting! PS A thread on a different DIY roller, with some comments that seem relevant.

Would it be worth trying acrylic medium as the resist (sometimes used as an alternative to shellac resist in water-etching)?

... or perhaps not. Electroplating vs Electroforming: What’s The Difference? https://facfox.com/docs/kb/electroplating-vs-electroforming-whats-the-difference Electroforming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroforming The process involves passing direct current through an electrolyte containing salts of the metal being electroformed. The anode is the solid metal being electroformed, and the cathode is the mandrel, onto which the electroform gets plated (deposited). The process continues until the required electroform thickness is achieved. The mandrel is then either separated intact, melted away, or chemically dissolved. ... my emphasis PS Note that when the form is to be separated from the mandrel it is advantageous if the electro-deposited layer is only weakly attached to the mandrel. For electroplating strong adhesion is desirable.

| Finding details of the iron content, this post & the one following it. The MICR market was always a tiny specialised market of very high iron content toner, don't even know if it is currently active. You Australian location won't help.

If you find a potential image is there any way of getting a preview of how it will look when fired as a transfer (which will typically have a different resolution and pigment model)?

I would keep trying http://ithesis-ir.su.ac.th/dspace/bitstream/123456789/2977/1/60155902.pdf from time to time. It seems a fairly serious "internal error" as it won't let me go to the home page or notify the administrator. With luck this might mean that they will fix it soon-ish (a few days?).

Example of cobalt concentration vs depth of colour Cone 6 Ultramarine Cobalt Blue Glaze (Glossy Clear plus Cobalt Carbonate) https://www.thestudiomanager.com/posts/cone-6-ultramarine-cobalt-blue-glaze-glossy-clear-plus-cobalt-carbonate Tst ... but it doesn't have the cyan-ish tinge.

A picture showing the inside of one of the busts might help. Even better if there is something like a ruler in shot to give the scale. Either posted here or on your website.

Just another data point: electrical heating film for underfloor or sauna heating @ 440w/sq meter. https://tinyurl.com/2abs2xdf Didn't quite believe the difference in the wattage figures, so checked my maths. The rather large difference maybe related to the speed of response required?

Lots of good stuff by the experts over in the Equipment Use and Repair forum. Especially if you are considering a second-hand kiln.

Be aware that kilns advertised as cone 6 may have a short element life if regularly fired to cone 6. In https://community.ceramicartsdaily.org/topic/30261-paragon-dtc-800-kiln/?do=findComment&comment=228238 A cone 6 kiln firing to cone 6 will only get maybe 50 firings before the elements need to be replaced. Once they wear even a little bit, the kiln can no longer reach its max temp. In a cone 10 kiln firing to cone 6, the elements can wear a lot more before they need to be replaced. If your cone 6 kiln is getting more firings that that, then it is probably under-rated.

First a few caveats. 1) As you ask what is the diameter of the wire I assume that you haven't got it yet. If so, why use expensive nichrome when you are operating it at such a low temperature? Oxidation of the conductor isn't going to be an issue, so nichrome's big selling point doesn't apply. 2) At the temperature you mention the wire looses heat mainly through conduction and convection rather than radiation. These are very dependent on the (changing?) surroundings of the wire. 3) The amount of heat required to melt snow off the wall (I'm assuming the fabric is inside the wall) may significantly exceed that required when the outside conditions are dry. Do you have any guestimate of the weight of water that might need to be unfrozen? (It takes about 0.1 Kwh to melt 1Kg of ice once it's at 0C.) 4) While it still needs careful engineering, I suspect that a thermostat-based solution would handle the wide range of conditions better. Then a reference from the Electrical Engineering section of a Q&A site How do i find nichrome temperature https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/84516/how-do-i-find-nichrome-temperature ... I rather go with the second answer You can't. Sorry. The temperature of the wire depends not only on the electrical power on this wire, but also on the ambient conditions - i.e. how the heat is dissipated. This way, the temperature of the wire will not be constant in time, but will change depending on the air temperature and movement, materials that are in contact with the wire and so on. In order to make the temperature constant you will need to make the ambient conditions pretty stable, or to use temperature regulator that to regulate the electrical power on the wire in order to get the same temperature in different conditions. As long as the theory behind such phenomenons is too complex, the calculations are actually possible, but very complex. In most cases, experimental way is much more reliable and useful. Simply use regulated power supply and change the wire current until the temperature becomes what you need. But always remember that in other conditions it will be different. PS I see that StackExchange have tags that direct heating questions to interested readers. Maybe posting there would give you a better answer. https://diy.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/heating https://diy.stackexchange.com/tags/heating/info I've almost no personal experience with StackExchange, other than it's software section which is always informative.

Interesting to know. Probably not an easily DIY-able process (unlike calcined alumina, kaolin, etc.) as seems to be melted & reground not simply pre-heated. Anhydrous Borax Alternate Names: Calcined Borax, Dehydrated Borax, Pyrobor https://digitalfire.com/material/anhydrous+borax Anhydrous borax is made by fusing hydrated borax into a glass and regrinding it.

https://lindabloomfield.co.uk/ ?

NASA seem to have had similar problems creating wind-tunnel models, there might be some interesting thoughts in: Improved ceramic slip casting technique https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19940015904 ... and the associated patent Not least the idea of using a shell mould (i.e. constant wall thickness). PS They seem to apply (paint?) the shell on a wax positive. If you prefer to cast it then a previous reference might be relevant 3D Printing a Mold for a Slipcasting Mold https://www.instructables.com/3D-Printing-a-Mold-for-a-Mold/

I'm not convinced that the shrinkage of the clay against the undercuts will not harm the casting, but ... Recycling of plaster of Paris https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7276351/ Conclusions Plaster of Paris can be produced by thermal treatment of recycled gypsum powder at a temperature of 180°C for 2 h. The results of this project show that POP could be recycled repeatedly with the same procedure without altering the required setting time and working characteristics of recycled POP powder for prosthetics and orthotics, and even improving the compressive strength of casts. Thus, recycling POP could preserve the environment and reduce pollution. It seems that recycling POP could reduce the cost of importing new POP. However, further study is needed to compare the costs of importing versus recycling POP. ... remembering they were recycling dry plaster. ... and grinding it to a powder. In your case the firing cycle would have to be slow enough at the right temperatures to successfully candle the clay. Also you would need to dry out the plaster. PS Faint memory that maybe freshly made pieces can be candled faster/hotter than partly-dry ones. From https://community.ceramicartsdaily.org/topic/29727-candling-temperature-drying-greenware-in-kiln/?do=findComment&comment=227839 What I certainly don't understand is a point I heard Ian Gregory make. That he could fire (without candling) pots a few hours after he made them, but otherwise has to wait about a week to do so. A tentative guess is that a half-dry pot could have a dry (and thermally insulating) outer layer that lets the outer layer to become "too hot" before evaporative cooling kicks in, while a fully damp pot supports an evaporatively cooled interface moving gradually from the outer surface inwards.

I'm unsure that you can produce a plaster slip-casting mould with a lost-wax process. Wouldn't melting the wax contaminate the plaster surface? A highly speculative, but possibly relevant thread, relying on the thermal degradation of the plaster. @tkw954 Did you have any success? PS More details on the size and shape of your master would be helpful.

Rubbing indian ink (or black felt-tip pen) over a glaze, then wiping it off is a good way of revealing unnoticed cracks in your glaze. See from about 1:49 into this video