Callie Beller Diesel

You can buy gold lustre erasers that will remove lustre that got in the wrong place, those purple smudges, or if you decide you just don’t like it. It’s an abrasive stone that doesn’t damage glaze. There’s a number of suppliers that carry it online, and at the moment the average cost seems to be about $14 in Canadian dollars. If you’re going to do more work with lustre, could be worth getting one.

Hi and welcome to the forum! I’d wait for some more sparky forum members to chime in to be sure, but Skutt and L and L kiln’s websites both recommend against GFCI because kiln brick’s electrical resistance reduces with heat, which can indeed trip a GFCI at the wrong time. ConeArt recommends having most models direct wired into the electrical box, and suggests consulting a licensed electrician who knows kilns. (Not all electricians are familiar: my own journeyman cousin wouldn’t touch my install because it wasn’t his area of expertise.) Edited to add: I’m shifting this thread to the Equipment Use and Repair section so it gets more eyes on it.

Hi and welcome! The way you have that question written, I’m picturing you layering clay slabs with toilet paper and then more clay slabs. If the clay pieces don’t contact and blend with each other, they’ll just delaminate, especially once you fire the paper out. BUT. There is a technique where you mix wet paper pulp (no more than 20% by volume, but “to taste”)with reclaim slurry, so that the fibres reinforce the clay, and that is indeed called paper clay. You then dry the slurry into a workable consistency, and handbuild with that. The fibres gives pieces incredible green strength and makes attachments quite solid. Paper clay lends itself quite readily to really thin slabs that can be layered with each other, and pieces adhere to each other with just a little paper clay slip applied between. There is an article on the parent website here from 2009 about paper clay that was republished recently, and it recommends using cellulose attic insulation. I would personally NOT use this material because it contains fire retardant, and that’s gonna make extra fumes when you bisque your piece. This blog post from a former poster, Chris Campbell, does describe how to make your own paper clay quite nicely. If you want to google others, be sure to include ceramic or pottery in your search terms, or you’ll get a lot of paper mache instructions.

Looking at the residue left in your printed masters, I think Peter and Cenmoore are correct about smoothing the surface. The striations are acting like finger prints and creating small vacuums that grip the plaster. Even filling the print with something like automotive filler or spackle, sanding and sealing it with a good waterproof finish might save doing a rubber cast.

I want to qualify what Bill said somewhat. If your lustre firing is a third or even fourth firing for the piece, unless your clay body is unusual going the usual slow pace through quartz inversion will be fine. If you are making pieces out of a dense white talc body that have been fired 5+ times, that’s when keeping crystobalite formation in the back of your mind becomes relevant. It’s a consideration for those who layer lots of underglaze/glaze/decals/china paint in one piece.

I decided to try and be more mindful of gas usage in the soda kiln I was loading mid January, and not turn the burners on while I was stacking it. Everything was outdoors, so the posts and shelves were all icy to the touch, even though it was a little above freezing. The wadding I was adding to the posts froze in place, so it felt solid enough. However when the kiln was halfway to cone 10, the stack fell over because it thawed and the previously even wadding shifted.

Not specifically for memorial pieces, but I’ve cleaned up mould on a bathroom ceiling that wasn’t ventilated properly. They do make specific primer to go over mould cleanup. Mould once cleaned can still leave a discolouration or stain, and that can bleed through a lot of regular primers.

Plaster of Paris disintegrates pretty readily when exposed to water on the regular. Think about walls disintegrating when there’s been flooding. Pottery plaster is designed to absorb water, so it holds up better over time. Once cured, it’s a lot harder than plaster of Paris. If you get either type of plaster in your reclaim, small bits of it can create spalling or lime pops in fired ware. Basically, the clay shrinks and the plaster doesn’t. Usually it shows up right away, especially if the plaster was still holding some moisture in the early part of the firing. In some cases it can show up much later. A layer of a piece will fall off, and there’s a little soft white bit in the cavity.

@Denice if she makes gluten free pizza dough, the stone would be even more helpful. A lot of gluten-free breads and doings are nicer when toasted.

I agree with Pres: the biggest thing you can do to reclaim clay in a timely manner is to have a smaller reclaim bucket that obliges you to do it more often. Also, if space is a problem, you can build stacking frames to do reclaim on, similar to the principle Tom describes. This article (there’s a paywall, but you can access 3 free articles a month) describes how to build a gravity filter press. All you need are some 2x4’s, hardware cloth/chicken wire and a thrift store bedsheet. You can use this method to build stacking frames that have a smaller footprint, and even have separate trays for the different clay types. I do my reclaim on a similar setup, and I find as long as your slurry isn’t super fluid, you don’t need the plastic to catch the runoff. I aim for a pudding consistency.

Salt is mildly more corrosive to kiln brick than soda is, but the difference is somewhat academic. You might get a few more firings out of a kiln that’s dedicated to soda, but you’d still have to do replacements/repair work within a comparable number of firings. This based on the observations of the soda and salt kilns at Medalta in Medicine Hat, Canada. Those kilns are both outdoors, but under a metal shed roof with walls that offer protection from the winds and precipitation, but not temperature. They use the same kaolin/alumina kiln wash, and offer a couple of wadding recipes in both. Exposure to the elements and a bit of procrastination can actually assist with soda firing cleanup if you’re using Gail Nichols’ fine soda/whiting/water mix: the firebox residue will crumble within a day or 2 depending on humidity and can be swept rather than chipped out. The reasons that you’d want to have a soda only kiln have more to do with the end results on the pottery, as I think they found chlorine emissions from a pottery sized salt kiln were less than an outdoor swimming pool. That said, you should still wear respiratory protection when adding your sodium of choice, because both are caustic and are bad for soft little alveoli at close range. Salt vapourizes readily in the heat of a kiln. Soda is a lot more sluggish, which is why you need to dissolve it in water to get it to travel on a kiln draft. That means soda’s inclination is to leave more directional marks from the flame path rather than salt’s more overall coverage. If you really want to create directional marks, skip the sprayer and use the aforementioned “plaster” mix, or one of the many burrito methods. Soda gives a somewhat different colour response when used by itself, and leans towards cool/grey tones in places where it builds up. It can give a more crystalline/opaque surface where it gets really thick, especially if you watch your cooling. Salt seems to lean towards more brown, and seems to remain quite glossy. Some of this is going to depend on your reduction cycles, clay bodies, cooling cycles and a bunch of other factors, so what I’ve mentioned are more a generalization more than hard and fast rules. If people want to work with a soda specific aesthetic, which can be quite different from salt, you have to keep salt out of the kiln you’re using. Any significant salt buildup is going to affect future firings due to that volatility. If you’re looking to replicate a salt fired look but substituting soda ash for salt, contamination may not be a big concern for you. Residual salt can help reduce dry spots if you don’t want to be adding a whole bunch of soda ash, or if you’ve got beginners or people who may not be able to refire pieces.

I assume they’re using glacier grit because it’s locally available, but surely there must be a larger mesh size available. I dunno. @Jeff Longtin road salt used by itself is pretty caustic, and presents issues for roadside plants, as well as issues of it getting into waterways. Lots of municipalities will mix grit with salt to reduce the amount of salt used and increase traction. The mix will vary with climate and whatever gravel source is available locally. The stuff my city uses is like pea gravel, and it’s nowhere near that dusty. That said, our municipality does do as Rae mentioned, and they send out water trucks and street sweepers in the spring. Partly to keep the dust down, partly to keep it out of the storm drains, and partly to reclaim some of the road sand to reuse the next year.

If you only need a few of these circles or you don’t want to order a bunch of stuff, you can also make a poor man’s sticker. Lay strips of masking tape onto a piece of wax paper and cut out your desired shape. Peel the shape off the wax paper backing and use as you would masking tape.

I originally found it first through Pinterest. I had a brand new IPhone 4 in 2008 and a baby to nurse, so there was a lot of time spent holding still but kinda bored. I was missing making pots, so I was looking at them instead. There were articles and links to questions on the forum that got me thinking about how to answer them. At the risk of sounding like a weirdo, as a learning exercise I have always talked to myself in my own head as if I were teaching a class to myself. It’s a good mnemonic device that helps cement your own understanding. I hadn’t really intended to ever create an account or chime in, and lots of other folks seemed to have most of the questions handled pretty good. After a while, I had a sense of who the community members were and what they were most knowledgeable about. None of the regulars at the time was doing any kind of commission work though, and someone asked a question about it. It just so happened that I was working for a company that worked exclusively with bespoke glass customers, so I had a good model of how to make commissions financially viable. So I wrote a novel for my first post, lol!

After the last time it went off the market, I managed to come into most of a 50 lb bag. I’ve wound up using very little of it. I use more frit 3124 and 3134 because I find frit recipes easier to fix bucket behaviours with.

A high bisque/lower glaze is a cycle that’s designed to eliminate a lot of clay-based flaws in glazes, so I don’t think it’s your chosen firing cycles. I agree with Min that your glaze is likely beginning to re-melt in the decal firing, especially since the glaze is mature at 1100 C. I think you’re on the right track in trying the lower decal firing temperature first. If that doesn’t work, you may need to change your clear/base glaze.

Was the glass kiln operator the first owner of the kiln, or was it second hand to them? This is an oddly shaped and overpowered kiln for a glass artist, even if the controller would help offset some of that. The differences in temperature throughout the height of the kiln present real problems for glass artists, who need finer cooling control than those of us working with clay. I could sort of see justifying spraying a pottery kiln to use with glass with ITC if they thought it would help increase that cooling control, but it would have been much, much easier and less expensive to buy a glass kiln in the first place. . If you’re slumping, fusing or annealing, normally you’d use kiln wash on a shelf or a mould, the same way a potter would. Some warm glass folks will forego even kiln wash in favour of kiln paper sheets, because the texture from a brushed on wash can transfer to the piece.

If anyone is past their 10 article limit, try typing the name of the article directly into your browser. Often you can bypass the paywall on articles that have been made available for promo this way. It’s interesting to see both the pros and cons of communal studios in the comments section. The upvotes on the assorted comments are revealing too. The person who was complaining about perfume only has 1, after 3 weeks of the article being live. The more positive ones have a LOT more.

Hoping to renovate the bath/shower in our main bathroom. I really want to be rid of some ugly tile and 1970s blue bathtub! Depends on how much I can bring in from the farmer’s market though. Other than that, I think we’ll spend a week camping out in BC at a spot we know and love to go to every year. Other than that, I think we’re just going to lay low a bit. We’ve had a crazy spring with family events and husband’s work travel.

If this doesn’t work, and you have a lot of pieces with these designs that you want to make, Milestone does offer custom decal runs. They silkscreen their gold decals, so the lines are nice and crisp.

It’s less common now to learn about formulating your own clay body because 1) there’s a lot of really good commercial clays readily available, and 2) mixing your own clay on the regular is a lot of backbreaking work. Soldner mixers are the right height ergonomically for no one. Word to the wise: have a look into how to mitigate some of the bending over and lifting of heavy wet clay out of the mixer when you’re setting it up. Lincoln 60 was one of the ingredients in the beginner cone 10 stoneware we all mixed up in college. The Lincoln was included because it gave a wider particle size variety to the epk and ball clay. This gave the clay a really good green strength and made it very forgiving shrinkage-wise, on the wheel and when making attachments. It will add quite a bit of speckle to the end result, especially if you’re firing in reduction. That speckle will bleed through all glazes, so using it exclusively will give you a very heavy 1970’s Peter Volkous look. By itself it’s suitable for sculpture, but not for functional ware. If you haven’t found Digitalfire.com yet, it’s a really good free clay and glaze chemistry resource, and there’s a few articles on formulating clay bodies that are good jumping off points. Definitely be sure to check the links to expanded info at the bottom of the page. I like glazy.org as a calculator, but I still prefer Digitalfire’s materials database. I find it contains more material provenance.

I poked around on the manufacturer’s website and on Dick Blick to find the MSDS. They’re pretty cagey about any kind of material content, only saying that it passes a number of safety tests for non-toxicity, so getting an indication of what could cause a chalky texture from ingredients is a non-starter. They do have lots of other good technical data available though, which is really nice to see. A couple of customer reviews mention a chalky feeling to the fired clay, but nothing like a hazing or scumming effect like you see with some earthenwares. Does it wipe off or change with wet sanding? I agree that firing a test to maturity to see if it disappears is a good idea. If that doesn’t solve the problem, reaching out to the manufacturer would be a good next step. They do seem pretty responsive, and website translation is pretty good.

Glaze formulation is going to be less important than the mechanical join I think, if you’re set on doing it with glaze. As you already mentioned, where there’s more glaze, the join is stronger. If you’re building pieces with the intent of glazing them together, can you leave some textured spots to increase the surface area where the pieces will attach? Thinking of a slip and score principle.

I think a few people have suggested similar methods over the years, although I can’t remember who would have suggested selling under 2 different names for the lines. Most of us who make dinnerware and other functional stuff do some form of more art based work at some point, although not everyone goes with 2 separate and concurrently produced product lines. I see more jewellers and graphic artists have 2 different names for their bread and butter vs art lines like this, but it’s not unheard of. I think getting in with an established interior design firm with a wealthy clientele is a very good way of finding someone who can help you realize a higher price point. I can see it having some positives, in that they’ll be used to a certain set of professionalism rules, and payment timelines. I think being familiar with the business and their reputation both on the client and vendor end is a really smart idea.

I have a few thoughts on this. First, if your COGS have gone up, you can’t just eat that and continue to, well, eat. If you are selling your work at more places than just the one gallery, you should be increasing your prices across the board to factor for that alone. Inflation stories aren’t new to anyone at this point, it’s happening globally, and we all have to contend with it. It’s a function of capitalism, and we all live under it. Sigh. Regarding the actual end price of the mug, there’s actually not a lot of functional difference between a $28 and $36 mug price point. A $28 mug isn’t an impulse purchase (mostly), and $8 isn’t going to break the bank of people who are already buying a nice mug. My price points were at a similar place a couple of years ago, and when I had to increase, I was surprised at how much people *didn’t* balk. If they liked it enough to buy it at $25, they were fine paying $30, and later $35. It can decrease the number of mugs you sell, but you also wind up being more profitable on those ones. It turns into a nice get more for less work situation. That leads me to my last thought: a 30% increase all at once can be a lot. As stated before, we can’t really eat that cost, but big jumps are off-putting for everyone. What you could consider is doing a partial increase now and another one later in the year. If people are forewarned via your social media or email newsletter, they tend to be more accepting. What I’ve seen a lot of folks do is frame it in terms of “due to ___ I have to increase my prices, so if you want to take advantage before it goes up, be sure to shop before (date of increase).” Breaking it up could look like increasing 15% to $32 after the 4th of July (because that’s the closest holiday), and if you can afford to hold off until fall, framing the next one as a Black Friday thing. Those dates are just suggestions. They can be adjusted based on what fits your sales style and customer base best.