kswan

@oldlady all of the years I loaded shelves at the HS and at home I never used gloves. Had lots of little cuts from sharp glaze edges and such, but no major damage. However, now that I have the new kiln with the shelf kit which included gloves, I wear them all the time. They are great when loading and unloading the shelves. Most of the time I have the kiln cool enough I can easily hand touch everything, but on occasion have also used the gloves on warmer pots.  My wife says I handle everything hotter than she could ever do, that goes for spicy food too!
 
best,
Pres

so glad it will work!  my problem with that small space for lifting is that when i empty the kiln, i need the gloves that came with my kiln.  i think they are kevlar?  anyway, they make my fingers so fat that only the tips can reach under the shelf and lift it to the edge of the kiln.  rest a second or so, grab the shelf properly and pivot it into the stack of shelves.  yes, lee, i really would like advancers or some other brand of the same thing.   at 82 i am not sure i will be working for many years to come and their cost would not be an investment, just a price.
kswan, glad to know you cut the shelves you have easily.   one of these days when the 6 months of ignored housework is done, i will find the grinder and whatever disc cuts shelves.  power tools are wonderfully fast and i have only drilled into the palm of my hand once, years ago and cannot even find the scar now.

I'm glad someone has answers about cutting a small part off a shelf. I have the same problem as @oldlady with my shelves fitting in my newer 3" brick kiln. My shelves are rounded, not octagonal, so I put my fingers on the shelf where the kiln bricks make a corner. It's a squeeze, but I can get them in and out.
My bigger problem is the square shelves I use as plate setters. I could get them two across in my old kiln. In my newer kiln, the corners almost touch the bricks. I just lopped off two corners to make it easier to fit them in! The other two corners can stay, since they are where I place the posts for the next plate shelf. Thanks to people who suggested using an angle grinder. We got one of those from a family friend who passed away, but I'd never used one before. I watched a bunch of videos, bundled myself in every bit of safety gear I own, and got the two corners cut off of all six shelves. I asked my husband to be nearby in case he had to rush me and a severed finger to the hospital, but I still have all my digits and limbs intact. 
 

I'm glad someone has answers about cutting a small part off a shelf. I have the same problem as @oldlady with my shelves fitting in my newer 3" brick kiln. My shelves are rounded, not octagonal, so I put my fingers on the shelf where the kiln bricks make a corner. It's a squeeze, but I can get them in and out.
My bigger problem is the square shelves I use as plate setters. I could get them two across in my old kiln. In my newer kiln, the corners almost touch the bricks. I just lopped off two corners to make it easier to fit them in! The other two corners can stay, since they are where I place the posts for the next plate shelf. Thanks to people who suggested using an angle grinder. We got one of those from a family friend who passed away, but I'd never used one before. I watched a bunch of videos, bundled myself in every bit of safety gear I own, and got the two corners cut off of all six shelves. I asked my husband to be nearby in case he had to rush me and a severed finger to the hospital, but I still have all my digits and limbs intact. 
 

For straight cuts, a tile saw might work.
We've used ours to cut bricks and pavers - goes through them like butter.
It's a wet process, so very little dust, however, for kiln shelving, thorough drying afterward.

well gang, i just finished firing the last load (actually it was also the first load since may, i think)  and i found myself using 9 shelves, thick,  full rounds.  it helps that i put a permanent bottom shelf in at 2 inches above the kiln bottom.   added a thick piece of lumber to the floor in front of the kiln.   found the hardest part was controlling the lid going both up and down.   it leans slightly against a metal  "handicap bath bar" attached to the wall.    finding space for my fingers is very difficult  since the shelves were purchased for a 2 1/2 wall thickness.  this kiln has 3 inch walls so i want to find a way to slice a 3-4 inch off opposite sides of each shelf for finger space.  one shelf is damaged a little on one side and i use it for deep down there.
anybody know how i can remove just a few inches without breaking the shelf?  somewhere, i have one of those 4 inch circular grinders, will that do it?  it would be great if i could take a bird's mouth bite out of 3 of them to fit around the thermocouples.
 

I have a 4” angle grinder, with a diamond cutting blade (not a grinding wheel, a cutter) I can slice through regular kiln shelves pretty easily. 

Quick gelli plate and silkscreen process, with and without paper. 
Gelli plates don't contain gelatin but you can make your own gel plate using gelatin, don't know how well / long homemade gel plates last for. 
1 - gelli plate dusted with cornstarch (gelli plates come in different sizes, I'ld get one just big enough for what you want to screen) 
2 - silkscreen in place (can get custom made ones or stock ones, available from a few makers not just EZscreen, can also buy a blank screen and burn it yourself)
3 - Xiem rib used with thick underglaze. Either let it thicken up on it's own or thicken with Mayco silkscreen medium/powder. I tried the Mayco medium I think it's probably CMC, I prefer to just let it thicken on its own. Needs to be almost peanut butter thick.
If you use a gelli plate it needs to be applied to the pot (or vice versa) quickly while the underglaze is still wet. Either lift up the gelli plate and press it onto the pot or roll the pot across the gelli plate.
With paper instead of gelli-
1 - Rice paper (I buy from Sanbao but other places sell it too) rough side up, no cornstarch
2 - tape the screen down, same underglaze process 
Can also screen right onto pots if the screen isn't too large to be awkward. I find the paper is easier to apply to rounded forms.
  

 
 

We had wood and metal shops, laboratory Chemistry and Biology in seventh grade (near Pittsburgh, PA); art and music all through grade school, everywhere we went; sports options and PE class also everywhere. 
In grades eight through twelve, drafting; wood, metal, cooking, sewing and auto shops (I did a semester of wood, for access to the big saw, also one semester of auto, for access to the equipment to refurbish my cylinder heads); many music options, also theater and dance; an hour a week of "enrichment" course - I recall surveying and some heavy equipment driving; driver training course; several sports options; typing and office machines classes.
In the nearby public school districts (Central and Northern California), most of the shops have closed in the last forty years or so - also many dance, music, and theater studios have shuttered. There are more computer labs! I'd like to see more focused instruction in development (coding, e.g. Java, C++, Python) vs. just learning to run applications (e.g. Excel, Word, database, etc.).
Our Mother was an accomplished bowler (her average was well over 200 for many years), an internationally known specialist in embroidery, dabbled in oils and acrylics, sewed (from scratch) and repaired clothing, knitted and crocheted, and was a whiz in the kitchen. She learned to swim and play the guitar well after reaching her sixties.
Our Pop leveraged his background in heavy equipment repair and maintenance, welding, and machining (all in the logging trade) in his career as an Electrical Engineer. He designed and built several solutions in his work, also around the house and for his hobbies, e.g. he designed and built spearguns (for diving/fishing), fashioned belt buckles, designed and built nutcrackers...
Any road, we had hand work going on at home, all the time. We had access to tools, materials, workshop space, and the kitchen as well. We had our parent's support for just about anything we wanted to try. I started out with frying an egg at about five, was well into scratch cakes and pies by seven. My brother and I got into crepes later on. Mom cried.
We adjusted, cleaned, repaired and lubed/maintained our skateboards, bikes, motorbikes and automobiles. We took things apart and mostly put'm back together as well.
Pop used to bring things home for us to tinker with, e.g. his friend's broken Attitude Indicator (from a small plane). The friend was mad when Pop told him his seven year old son had disassembled the unit, found the fault, made the sketch, then re-assembled it.
All that to say that home and community are big influences.
I wasn't the one who picked up manual skills the fastest, that's for sure. I never did catch on to bowling, though try I did! I don't draw well, am fairly hopeless with sculpting, struggled with the violin for several years, was typically picked last for sports... I have some gifts - "perfect pitch" being one; stamina for the distance events, that's another; focus and persistence, that's helpful; a somewhat analytical approach, that's sometimes helpful too.
 

I went to a Composite high school, so yeah, there were all the home ec/welding/art/shop/automotive/beauty culture courses available. The school was set up as a precursor for trades or college or both. (Beauty culture is what they called it, but if you went through all the courses, you would up as a fully fledged hairdresser or esthetician). That was in the 90’s. 
Programs like this are still alive. My 14yo takes foods and fabrication as electives in jr high, and loves them. 
It’s hard for me to look at this question personally without viewing it through the lens of adhd, which, is highly heritable. I come from a long line of folks who were very smart, and didn’t hold still with any particular grace. Before computers, you either did things with your hands, or you went crazy. My Oma used to tell us that she had to give my dad stuff he could take apart and put back together, or he’d do it to something expensive like the TV. My mom’s side is all farmers and other flavours of highly capable people. So knitting, sewing, pouring candles, fixing things, projects involving creative reuse were going on constantly around me. I didn’t realize not everyone did that until I moved out and had roommates. 

Turkey Retirement Home?

As a friendly reminder from my front yard--

In Southern California elementary school in the 50s we learned to write the alphabet by printing and then cursive (my youngest grandchild, 21,  cannot read or write in cursive  ). We learned to fold, cut, color, draw, paste (yum!) and glue (Elmers doesn’t taste the same anymore, either).  
My Mom was ‘crafty’ and my Dad was a mechanic/woodworker. They grew up during the Depression, so making well and making do were basic understandings.  I spent my free time making stuff, dolls and doll clothes and paper dolls with my best friend, and reading about making stuff. Sewing and cooking classes in 8th and 9th grade, wished I could take woodworking in High School, but that was for boys. I made a lot of my own clothes, also with a best friend (we wanted and needed to be original). Some Art teachers were inspiring and remembered fondly.
I’m jealous of folks who had ceramics in high school. It wasn’t until my second attempt at Junior College, age 22, that I finally found my clay calling   Hanging out with other clay people led naturally to construction, brick laying, booth building, photography, Volkswagen repairs, computer skills for brochures and flyers and accounts, and a sometimes economically perilous but fulfilling life of creativity.

Yes. I took 4 years of wood working, and 4 years of architectural drafting. Small engine repair, lathe, metallurgy, welding, and 2 years of mechanical drafting. 2 years of electrical wiring, a semester of electrical motor repair. I took Home Ec my senior year, but I already knew how to cook. Some farm classes, which were pretty much useless because I was a farm boy anyway. I excelled in chemistry, always had a curiosity about it. Enrolled in a local college to major in chemistry until I realized I would spend the rest of my life in a cubicle- so I dropped out.
Tom

I thought my school had everything,  it was a very large school so they had more than enough kids to fill each program.   I was mostly in art and journalism but they had also so had cooking, sewing and secretarial program.   The art students could get help in the shop classes with tools that weren't in the art class  for their projects.   They had all kind of programs for the boys  drafting,  mechanics and shop class, they also had buses that would take the boys to a technical school for half days.    My mother in-law started telling me about her high school classes,  she lived in western Kansas.   They taught those children everything would would need to know to run a farm or ranch.  They also had a tough math,  English, and history curriculum  and broad sports programs for the boy and girls.  She died at the age of 98 two years ago she was a world traveler and worked at a bank with the first primitive computers.   Denice 

My middle school, H.S. years were in the late 50's early '60's and the only things girls could take were typing & home ec. Sewing was taught by the moms & art classes were fairly lame-I taught myself in terms of most hands-on art materials/processes. Where I lucked out was that my dad wanted a boy-no secret in our house-and got me instead. So, since I hated the rigid box for females, I pestered him until I was a full-fledged member of his Scout Troop & did everything the boys did, indoors & in the wild, and just as good. That earned me the privlege of being able to go down to the basement to my dad's shop where I got to do everything from manual & power equipment for wood/metal/plastic to working the Morse code for him (as a Ham radio operator) on his brass key pad. I didn't go to university art school until the '80s and by then things were much, much better--we women could & did the same things as the guys-no restrictions. So I learned a lot more in terms of dexterity , motor control etc, via ceramics, cold glass,wood, sculpture (lite welding), textiles, some manual typesetting, & pre-computer graphic arts...cut and paste was real different ha ha.   

My high school (graduated 1985) had a home economics room, complete with stovetops, ovens, and sewing machines. It had a well equipped wood shop, and a separate “industrial arts” lab. Two art rooms, one for fine arts and another for ceramics. It’s important to know the context of this was soon after a major oil boom in Alaska. 
A few years ago I was able to peruse the school district’s surplus warehouse. I was surprised by the number and variety  of stationary power tools that had been removed from schools.
What I see now in schools that’s analogous are robotics labs, 3-D printing, and CAD design spaces. Maker spaces. Definitely some hands on skills happening there, just not the kind I grew up with. Art rooms and ceramics labs still remain. Thankfully. 

I did wood shop and metal casting in Junior High (7-9th grades)now called middle school I think? sewing and typing was high school for sure.
In collage we had home economics and wood shop and auto repair (I took none of that )as I was 110% into ceramiucs /art major. 
I can from a family that made stuff and art was also in that mix so it was learned at home -surfboards from Balsa wood in the 50s and aluminum skateboards made with steel skates (before better wheels and wood tops).  Worked on Bicycles and mini bikes then go carts then cars. Was into wood work as a young boy and fiberglass as well. Pained my bike fram in 5th grade after stripping it down. School had programs then like shop and art as this was before Reagan killed the educational budjet for our state. Back when stuff with hands was common practice.
Now its all gone . Cal went from #1 in education (back in the day) to #37 in the Forbes Mag scale this past year. My mother taught Home economics in high school and collage for 35 years. I have little more than most in terms of this exposure.

Issac Button was a machine. Just casually wearing a shirt and tie under his coveralls,  pouring glaze in 25 lb bowls smoking a pipe the whole time. 

Brings up the physicality of working with clay doesn't it? Net gain, probably, but there are side effects for sure. 

My SiC kiln shelves arrived this weekend, I’m so excited… but I accidentally ordered 3/4” instead of 5/8.”
After consoling myself with the fact that they’ll take a lifetime to warp at cone 6, I remembered watching Isaac Button load his kiln.
I feel better now. I encourage anyone with heavy kiln shelves to watch him load his kiln. Around the seven minute mark if you’re short on time. 
 

Can I be a functional fine artist? Actually, isn't that what the decorative arts are? I think that's me, as I like to make functional work but with a hand painted surface. When people ask me, I've been saying "ceramic artist" too, because I handbuild many pieces. I associate a potter with a wheel even though I know that's not strictly the case.

Looks like nanoparticle titanium dioxide is being used in self cleaning or hydrophobic glazes for washroom sinks and toilets. From this article, there are quite a few more articles if you search for nanoparticle titanium dioxide in hydrophobic ceramics. 

@Hulk I had just reread that post of yours, and good work with the teapot! It looks like your clay has some grog in it, am I right? It seems like that may play a part in helping prevent drips.
@Min @PeterH I'm thinking of something to be fired on, rather than applied after firing. I wonder if a very stony matte glaze would work, just at the cut edge of the lip. Or brush on a slip that's rougher textured and leave it unglazed, but my Yixing teapot is a very smooth clay body, so that can't be the only thing. 
Is there a way to find out water's hydrophobic reaction to clay/glaze materials, or is that something to just test out on my own?  I seem to recall something about this in the back of my brain somewhere, that you can check this on fired glazes by putting a drop of water on it and seeing how much it spreads out or forms a ball. My clay and glaze let it flow too much, and I wonder if there is a known specific material (ie sodium flux versus calcium, kaolin versus ball clay) that helps with this.  Does sand or grog have an inherent ability to cut the flow? 

The reason you don’t find definitive answers about whether or not a specific material is or is not food safe is that it depends on what else it’s mixed with, and in what proportion. The specific firing conditions can also play a part. Each combination of materials is a little different, and that affects the properties of the end of the result. The absence or presence of any one material in a recipe does by itself not indicate whether or not a glaze is a good one to use on dishes for food service. To give more specific answers, we have to get into chemistry numbers and parameters. We can do that here, and will happily if you want, but I like to check first before infodumping. 
Food safety is also a bit of a misnomer. Most people come into it thinking that it means things aren’t going to leach out of your glaze and poison you off. That happens a lot less frequently than you might think. The greater concern when making food ware is durability. You don’t want your glaze wearing off in the dishwasher, you don’t want it crazing or scratching easily, you don’t want it staining or to be hard to clean, and you definitely don’t want it to change colour or texture over time. If the durability requirements are met, the likelihood of leaching falls drastically.