Callie Beller Diesel
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Posts posted by Callie Beller Diesel
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Stroke and Coat is incredibly user friendly, although I’ve never tried them on wet work. They seem to work fine on leather hard and bisque in my experience.
Depending on your clay and some of the colours and how your students apply them, if you find they’re coming out a bit dry, they can benefit from a coat of a zinc free clear. If your firing is hot enough and everyone applies them at the right thickness, it may not be necessary.
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If you’re getting that much crud out of your clay body and the pinholes are going straight down into the clay, that says to me the clay is the problem, and possibly batch related. I’d reach out to Standard with that image as a start. If you don’t want to get rid of your existing clay, you may do well to slow down your bisque if it’s not already moving at the slowest speed. Speed is more valuable in my experience than top temperature. If it’s already going slow, another option is to add a soak hold in the carbon burnout stages, to allow all that junk a chance to escape.
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I spoke with my supplier last week, and he said that current Custer supplies are equivalent to whatever normal purchasing rates would be for 2 years. He’s limiting his customers to reasonable amounts, and not permitting stockpiling by any one individual. We will all need time to test clay bodies especially for replacements.
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No shade on Sue whatsoever, but Tony is the source of this particular glaze, and you’d be better off looking at his notes in this instance. Here is more related information from the source. https://digitalfire.com/article/g1214z+cone+6+matte+glaze. Long story short, I’d add silica in increments of 2%, up to 10%, just to see what it does.
Titanium dioxide is an opacifier, so it’s only useful if you’re making a white or opaque glaze. It’s an optional ingredient in your case.
Calcined kaolin is made by simply putting some epk in your next bisque, if you don’t want to go to the bother of programming a slightly lower temperature into your kiln just for this purpose. A soup bowl sized container will get you more than enough for this purpose. Usually any time you have a glaze with more than 20% clay, you want to look at calcining some of it, or the shrinking of the glaze slurry on the pot will give you grief.
I’d also suggest starting with 100g samples, rather than an entire gallon of glaze. Unless you’re also dividing the batch out to do colour blends?
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The work on that one is likely already done for you. That’s a digitalfire typecode, and here’s a link to Tony’s work on that glaze. It was literally formulated as a demo on how to make a glossy base glaze more matte.
Don’t get too hung up on the 103 number. The original base glaze likely added up to 100%, but when someone tinkers with a recipe and makes only minor adjustments, sometimes it’s easier to leave the results adding up to an odd number to leave whole numbers for ease of measuring.
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Oooh! I was pricing out a membership the other day, but balked at the price.
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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.
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People don’t buy pottery for aesthetics. I mean they do, but they’re buying your “eye.” It’s possible to buy white rutile pottery in my grocery store for a fraction of what I can make it for. But they buy my pottery because they like my take on that theme.
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Online stores aren’t less work than doing festivals or fairs, they’re just a different kind of work. Certainly less physical labour in terms of not having a booth to set up or tear down. But you have to be good at figuring out software, taking images and promoting yourself online somehow. Some people are really good at making social media connections, some people would rather have a root canal than play games with the algorithms.
As far as my personal opinion on Shopify vs Etsy goes, they’re comparing apples to oranges. Etsy is an online marketplace, and Shopify is a website building platform like Squarespace or weebly. You don’t go to Squarespace expecting them to drive traffic to you. But I’m not of the opinion that Etsy does a stellar ob of driving traffic to a given seller, and they change their SEO requirements frequently enough that no one can really make a consistent living off of it.
Shopify is just focused primarily on e-commerce, and has a bunch of features that let it handle shopping traffic and security built in. If you build your own website on Shopify, you pay them flat fees and you own it as long as you don’t do anything illegal and keep paying them. You’re in control of your own audience, for good or ill. You’re in charge of driving your own traffic, whether through social meda, ads, your email list, SEO or other methods.
If you open an Etsy shop, they also focus on e-commerce and transactions are secure. But ultimately, they own the platform and you are subject to how they want you to run your business. You don’t have to go too far to find the cons of using Etsy. Some of the complaints are from people who aren’t approaching selling there like running a business, but some are quite valid. The way they run their external ads is borderline usury, the requirements for things like top seller badges are unsustainable and the fee structure is unnecessarily complicated. My accountant *hated* their obtuse reporting. But the reason I left was because the traffic they drove to my site didn’t result in any conversions in a 1 year period. The customers who bought were all from my own efforts (social media and newsletter).
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I’m currently in an interesting position of having to revise most of the 10 shop glazes at a new teaching studio that weren’t properly tested before large batches were made. The person who chose them quit, or he’d have been fired. The glazes were all chosen entirely by the numbers: they all fall within the Stull recommendations, and don’t have weird variances in UMF. Most of them have easily traced provenance and have good reputations. But one failed an overnight vinegar test, and three more require weird bucket flocculation acrobatics that are deeply impractical to maintain in a teaching studio. One is pretty pricey because it’s half frit. 3 of them contain gerstley borate, with no attempt to reformulate. They were all mixed to the exact same specific gravity. 4 of them ran like a track star because of that. Only 2 out of the 10 need no immediate work. The person who put this glaze stable together read alllllll the technical manuals, but had zero practical experience.
But I was also taught glaze chemistry (*points flashlight under chin*) in the Before Times when there was No Digitalfire! (Woooooo!) Kidding aside. We were subjected to line blending every material in a chosen base glaze just to see what happened. My left eye still twitches thinking about that level of abject boredom, and I think the prof may have secretly hated us all. I remember thinking at the time that we were all probably reinventing the proverbial wheel, and that a reference text of some kind HAD to be out there somewhere to narrow things down. I am deeply, deeply grateful that glaze calc software exists to eliminates a lot of that kind of needless pedantry, and material waste.
Ideally glaze calc and empirical testing should be used together.
- Roberta12, GEP and Kelly in AK
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Re the cowboy boots: if they’re a round toed style that can accomodate a cushioned insole, carry on. If they’ve got pointed toes, a pair of hiking boots is a better option. You will likely be standing on a cement kiln pad for many hours. You won’t be exposed to a lot of situations where your feet are going to be subject to burns, but dropping pieces of wood on your toes or axe hazards are more likely scenarios.
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@planter if you go onto glazy and search “Hanna’s fake ash” there’s a handful of recipes that come up, including ones without the Redart, which I don’t think is available in England.
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So my experience of wood and soda firing as a medium sized woman is all in the frozen north, but a number of my teachers actually were educated in Georgia and other, warmer places. I imagine March will be cooler for you, so it’ll be more comfortable.
The best clothing is layers of 100% cotton you don’t mind getting dirty or wrecked. It should be not too baggy, so it’s not getting caught on things or subject to catching errant flames during a stoke. It should be loose enough to move comfortably in. The layers are so you can adjust to the changing temperature around the kiln site. It should be some form of natural fibre, because those will char, rather than melt like synthetics in the event of flying cinders or burns. Even the expensive orange canvas stuff will eventually get trashed, so get whatever fits that description that’s in your budget. I think a welding jacket is overkill, unless you find a comfortable one.
The workboots are a good idea, although I will say that the newer, lightweight “steel” toes (I think they’re some kind of mesh now) are much more comfortable, and it’s pretty easy to find women’s sizes. Unless something goes very wrong, I haven’t encountered burnt feet, but axes and wood debris are worth being mindful of. Get the steel (or mesh) shank ones if you’re working with things like pallet wood that haven’t had nails removed. No one needs nails through the sole!
The only other thing I’d recommend is some form of hair covering. Even if you’ve got long hair that can be tied back, embers can still singe the flyaways. Some cheap, colourful bandannas to keep you covered are nice.
As far as soda or salt goes, *mostly* those are gas kilns, although sometimes people will add a few pounds of salt to the back chamber of a multi chambered wood kiln. The physical demands of soda are less, because you’re not having to chop wood or stoke, and the PPE concerns aren’t quite the same. When it comes time to spray or soda bomb, mostly you’re worried about your lungs and your vision. And your hair, again. You can wear the same cotton work clothing, workboots and bandanna. Watching a gas kiln fire is like watching paint dry, so you won’t be around it for more than brief checks until it’s time to add soda. Mostly folks move away from the kiln after the soda’s been added, and while the dampers are closed. So you’re only wearing most PPE during spraying or when you’re pulling draw rings/checking cones, etc. I’d contact the workshop provider, and ask what they provide for PPE, and what they recommend you bring. Usually you have to bring your own respirator, because they should be fitted properly. They will often provide face shields.
- LeeU, kylies.clay and Rae Reich
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Yep. Anytime someone wants to pay extra for shipping wants you to use a shipper of their choice like that it’s a scam. They usually go after Craigslist or FB Msrketplsce with a similar spiel, but sometimes they branch out to small businesses.
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As a general rule, mixing gerstley borate and bentonite is a bad idea because it creates this situation. Enough Gerstley can deflocculate or even gel a glaze under its own power, and bentonite will make the effect worse. Add in Neph Sye, which can also be soluble, and it’s not super surprising this is happening. I haven’t done any tests with Gillespie to say if it does something similar to GB in the bucket or not, but I’m going to guess you’re finding it does.
If you mix this glaze again, try it without the bentonite. There’s enough clay to keep it suspended without.
Another thing worth checking is how long you’re mixing your glaze. Mixing factors heavily in Joe’s glaze process, as he uses a stick blender for tests, and he’s written blog posts about how that changes his results. I’m working with another of Joe’s recipes right now that someone else put together. We’re finding the bucket does loosen up significantly with a good 3+minutes with a drill mixer.
- Bill Kielb and Rae Reich
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@JohnnyK CBC is a public broadcaster here, so it’s not a cable package one. CBC Gem is the free streaming service you can get on devices, and has all the CBC original programming. There is a subscription level that lets you cut out ads, but is otherwise the same. It does require a VPN to be used outside of Canada though.
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@Bam2015 don’t let this thread overwhelm you too badly. If you want to zoom out far enough, no glaze will be as good as the day it was fired in a thousand years. They’ll all break down eventually.
While it’s possible to get really granular about the chemistry, it’s also worth noting that there’s also a pretty wide range of things that can be considered durable. The “good enough” threshold has at least some flex in it. And chemistry isn’t the only factor: the entire firing cycle is at work, as well as any interactions with the clay body itself.
We use tools like Stull maps, glaze calc software or limit formulas to help reduce some empirical testing, but it doesn’t eliminate the need for at least some due diligence test tiles. And that holds true with commercial clear glazes too. At some point you have to pick a recipe to mix, apply it to a pot and find out.
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7 hours ago, Bam2015 said:
this thread is way over my head.
This thread is getting more complex than it needs to be, certainly. It has ceased to be about helping the OP, and more about people arguing fine points of technical knowledge.
I’m going to suggest that the tech heads start a new thread about the comparative merits of Stull’s and Katz’s work if they want to keep going in that direction.
Any further replies on this one should try to focus on helping @GEP find a practical solution to her problem, which is needing a good base glaze for her work that doesn’t need recently discontinued materials.
- Kelly in AK and Bam2015
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3 hours ago, Gonepotty said:
Would it work if I used a greenaware pot?
Yes, but consider thermal mass. I wouldn’t use a big flat platter with no foot ring that might already be susceptible to cracking in the bisque. Something the size of a soup bowl works great.
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So I actually just did a round of simulated dishwasher/acid testing on the 50:30:20 base glaze, but with some tin, RIO and rutile added (the combo is really ugly, so I don’t recommend them). It did pass both tests. But the colourants may also play a part in the flux ratio, according to the Katz research. (I’m not willing to throw that out entirely. I think we just don’t know all the modifiers on it yet.)
As far as practical applications, it does appear to behave well in the bucket, doesn’t run unduly, although keep an eye on the thickness. It does react with other glazes reasonably well. My version is pretty expensive because of the tin, but even just the base glaze is a steeper cost than the base glaze we’re using at the teaching studio I’m at now. It’s not out of control, but the base runs $7.25/KG (Canadian dollars) and with 4% tin it’s $12.05/kg.
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As long as the early segments of the firing go slowly enough through the applicable temperature zones for burnout, you should be ok for sawdust inclusions. If the kiln is a relatively large one, the sheer thermal mass of everything *may* take care of that. Consult with the owner of the kiln to see if they have proportion suggestions.
Another possibility for inorganic inclusions could be crushed shells, if you have access. They’re calcium, so they’ll leave small white voids that may crumble away in any unglazed dry areas.
In terms of making flashing slips, look at any “dirty” kaolins you may have access to. If they’ve got titanium or iron impurities, they could do interesting things.
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Ok, everyone has to cheer for my IG friend Renu!
(You don’t, but I will be. She’s the sweetest person, and she’s the art teacher that everyone has super fond memories of.)
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After checking this article from digitalfire, it looks like actual Cornish stone stopped being available in 2014 or so, but there are a number of substitutes. So it’ll be worth checking into which substitute this is before deciding on long term availability. Some of those substitutes were made by combining other feldspars and if Custer was one of the ingredients, that could still present a problem.
In general, Cornwall stone isn’t as strong a melter as feldspar, and a straight 1:1 substitution isn’t going to work well at cone 6. You might need to add a bit more frit, or adjust with a touch of neph sye, depending. Cornwall stone also has some phosphorous in it, which can make for some neat colour responses/reactions. But it can also flocculate your glaze.
Because I think you’re likely not looking for potassium to provide a specific colour response, you could try subbing another feldspar that has a combined sodium and potassium number that’s closer to Custer’s combined values (KNa). The silica and alumina numbers will be less important to match in your substitution candidate, as you can adjust silica or EPK numbers in this recipe to compensate.
How do you best achieve a THICK deep crackling effect?
in Clay and Glaze Chemistry
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It’s probably a combination of slips/engobes/crawl glazes. It looks like there’s a lot of layers of different things, and without knowing who the artist is or anything about the process, that’s as much as I can guess.