Callie Beller Diesel

No one ever reads the listing, lol! It doesn't matter if it’s google, Etsy or your own online shop. I don’t want to start threads where we wind up venting about customers, because it’s too public here. If and when the offended parties see it, it can come back to haunt. But we do need places to talk to people about some of the things we see that can’t even be made up. I think it’s an important part of coping when working retail of any kind. If you need to commiserate with like minded folks online, I like S#!% Overheard at Art Festivals page on Facebook. It’s private, so you’re in a receptive audience. They take internet submissions as well as posting assorted chicken stroller/boa constrictor/interesting costume submissions. The page @smallbizmemez on Instagram will give you some good belly laughs as well. It’s the one place on the internet where you should read the comments. You can submit your experiences anonymously (or you can reveal yourself but not the customer’s details) and meme-ing will ensue. The rules on that one involve not going after the offender: we’re there to vent, not get revenge. The person who runs the account is pretty firm on that one.

Mark, would you mind sharing some tips in the forum about it? It could be germane to others as well.

Yeah, it’s probably some kind of metal casting kiln, given the staining around the elements. Something was burnt off in there, but I couldn’t say what. You’d need to build a crucible for it, and have all the necessary accoutrements. Without being there to test the resistance on the elements, I’d venture you’d have to replace the electronic components to make them useable.

Thank you! I was doing a bit of a comparison in the spring between email providers, and kind of gave it up at the time, because everyone wanted money. I wanted to start an automated welcome sequence because I’m terrible at emailing regularly, but no one has more than a single automated email as a free option. I notice these guys do though!

@PeterH usually on instagram, people are trying to appeal to customers, so tagging a post with information about the exact glaze used isn’t common practice. That particular hashtag has only 7 posts under it. If you were to use #orangepottery for instance, you’d get much better results for images, but it’d be unlikely to lead you directly to recipes. Pinterest would give you better search results, with the caveat that your results with recipes found online may vary.

Doing a quick search on glazy using search terms Kates Hot Orange gave me a recipe for Katz-Burke matte at cone 6. I only found one person who had listed an orange variation on it with some Degussa stains, link below. You can click through links at the bottom of the page to see the other variations. The tests using oxides seem to indicate it would take an orange stain just fine, but you’d have to play around with the exact hue and saturation you want. https://glazy.org/recipes/57204

If the glaze was working previously on all of these clay bodies, are any of them subject to the recent industry wide changes in talc supply? The new substitutes are playing havoc with current recipes and causing COE changes. edited to add: many plastic, white firing clays at cone 6 use talc, and it’s a fairly common glaze ingredient that was up until recently used to control crazing.

@Audrey Young I’ve found the easiest way to upload photos to a post is to log into the forum from your phone’s internet browser. You can then edit your post (tap the three dots in the corner for the right menu) to add photos. Your iPhone will allow you to resize them appropriately as you upload them, similar to the prompt you get when you email pictures.

@Bill Kielb Interesting! when you’re installing pipe like in your illustration, are the clips on the ends set so that they’re preventing that inward motion, slightly encouraging it, or allowing for movement?

Hi Al and welcome to the forum! I’ve changed the title for your question so that it gets more eyes on it.

When we say vitreous, we usually mean not absorbent. A porcelain for instance is vitreous, because it contains extra silica and forms a glass-like substance when fired to maturity. While you do encounter some porous tiles like Saltillo, they’re not ideal for a bathroom, and especially not in a shower. Your clay doesn’t have to be porcelain to have a low absorption rate though. Many of us here make pots for food use, and for that we recommend less than 1% absorbency, even if the work is glazed. In the event the glaze crazes, seepage can happen. The properties in a clay you’d use to make tiles would be a resistance to warping (which grog can assist with, but may present issues with absorbency in the fired product), low absorption at maturity, and something that looks good with your chosen glazes. I think that going to your local clay supplier or workshop and asking what they have that fits this bill is the best place to start, although it may be tricky. Usually clays that are very dense when fired are also prone to warping and need to be handled carefully in both the making stages and the firing. If your supplier has something you think fits the bill, still do some tests before committing to a large run. Clay is a naturally occurring material, and while manufacturers can provide specs, there can be some variance. Here is a link to an article that describes clay body porosity very well. At the very bottom of the page, there is a link that describes how to test your clay body for shrinkage and absorption. Here’s another link that describes how to test glazes and bring out any possible delayed crazing. You’ll want to keep that whole website bookmarked: Digitalfire is a fantastic free resource for potters.

Hi and welcome to the forum! Honestly, outside of either a professional studio or an educational facility of some kind, prevention is better than cure, especially if you don’t have much of a budget. Good studio habits that keep dust down in the first place are low cost, low input, and highly effective. The air filtering solutions that work are expensive, especially if you’re a recent grad. We all know the drill. Wear an N99 or higher respirator, wet cleanup, wet mop, cover your bucket between dry ingredient additions when mixing glazes indoors, mix outdoors weather permitting, work clean, don’t use fans because they stir up dust. Bonus points for things like studio shoes that don’t leave the studio, frequent washing of any towels/cloths/aprons, no canvas on tables, etc. If you’ve got a basement that has a textured floor, get some self levelling compound and make it easier to mop. Or a piece of vinyl flooring if you’re renting.

It’s usually easier to apply tissue transfers to wet clay, but it can be done on bisque. You just have to use a light hand and blot when you dampen it with a sponge, or the image will smudge easily. Glazes will be best dipped carefully, or sprayed on. If you use a brushing glaze, it’ll smear the image.

Tony Hansen did up this article on digging your own found clays. If you’re not familiar, Digitalfire is an absolute go-to pottery resource. https://digitalfire.com/article/how+to+find+and+test+your+own+native+clays

@RebeccaLoft your best bet might be to follow the link in the post directly above yours. The manuals haven’t changed a lot in the last few decades.

Regarding the bisque, I personally kept a handful of bisqued pieces for 15 years before firing them. Long story. Can confirm they needed a wash, but came out otherwise fine. I can’t remember the exact spot I came across this, but within the last few months I was going through old (1970’s) issues of Ceramics Monthly online, and found an ad for Mayco paints that were indeed just acrylics. They were intended for people doing the scratch and bake greenware, but weren’t firing a glaze. My MIL also had some from back in the day. If there’s no firing instructions on the labels, they’ll be trash if they’re dried out.

You said you want to create a light shimmer. I’m assuming you’re talking about using a mother of pearl lustre. If that’s the case, be advised that if you apply too light of a layer, it won’t show at all. It also shows to best effect if you brush it on with short, irregular strokes. If you want MOP that is legible, take every rule about applying smooth brushstrokes and do the opposite.

I’ve done a bunch of scrounging and repurposing over the years for assorted things, and there’s very few items I think I’ve paid full price for, other than materials. I think the thing that I’ve enjoyed a great deal more than I thought I would was the banding wheel that got thrown in with a $150 materials purchase from a moving sale. The guy was moving to New York State to be with his girlfriend and didn’t want to take anything with him, so he was just pushing stuff at me. I’d never used one regularly before, but they’re pretty nice.

If the small amount of water that’s in underglaze affects your handle joins at the green stage, the join isn’t sound to start with. Or you’re working very, very thinly. If you’ve done it properly and wiggled the pieces together until they stop moving, mug handles shouldn’t separate from the body at any stage. Because you’re creating essentially one piece of clay instead of 2, the join itself is very reinforced. If there’s going to be damage to a handle, either the handle should snap off leaving a stub, or it’ll break in a U shape around the join on the body. You may still get some hairline cracks around the edges if the attaching slip shrinks, but at that point those are aesthetic problems, not structural ones. You can smooth that kind of crack out with the point of a wooden tool when the piece is dry.

So there’s a lot to learn about glaze chemistry, and if you’re interested in furthering your knowledge, there are some good free resources. You are by no means required to have a big chemistry background if you’re making a few things just for fun, but knowledge helps you even if you’re just buying a few bottles of glaze and a box of clay and calling it therapy. If you want to get into selling functional work, it’s a good idea to learn a lot more though. You already know about this website, and there’s all kinds of fun and informative videos and articles to be found here. You have already discovered the forum The reference we all know and love is digitalfire.com. It’s an older website, but it’s been put together by Tony Hansen, who makes all the clay and glazes for Plainsman, which is the main clay supplier in western Canada. It’s got articles and materials information galore. Here’s a link to the articles list there, but theres lots more to read. Apologies ahead of time to your family if you like going down internet rabbit holes. Glazy is also a great tool if you want to get into calculations, or to find glaze recipes to mix yourself, glazy.org offers a free glaze software calculator and a searchable database of glaze recipes others have posted.

Inorganic chemistry is also pretty fun, I agree! Short answers: 1)The floating thing is what happens when your underglaze* gets dissolved by your glaze: bits and pieces of the purple are floating in the clear. On your mug you’re mixing 2 distinct glass relatives when they’re hot, but they’re not spending enough time at top temperature to become homogeneous. If you give them more time to melt together in, say, a second firing, they start mixing together more. This accounts for the more floating look of the combo on the body vs the less incorporated look on the handle. 2)The crazing thing is because the overglaze doesn’t fit your clay body: it’s unlikely anything you did or didn’t do affected this. They’re just mismatched. Ask your supplier if they have a clear that they recommend that doesn’t craze. 3)* Stroke and Coat isn’t an underglaze. It’s kind of it’s own weird animal. It behaves a lot like an underglaze in that it applies at green or bisque, has a WYSIWYG appearance and doesn’t burn out or run, even at cone 10. (Some colours don’t survive the top end). But it’s technically sold as a glaze that has a really ridiculous, otherwise unheard of, super wide firing range. It’s supposed to have enough flux to get glossy without a clear coat over top at cone 06, but while it’ll be fused, it can be a little dry at that point. Lots of places do use a clear coat over top to help smooth out brushstrokes and cover any dry areas. But whenever you combine 2 glazes, you run the risk of them running more in tandem than they would separately. It’s a good idea to use clay cookies/wasters/drip catchers when combining glazes for the first time, even if you’re working with something as stable as S&C, and especially when you’re combining 2 different brands.

Hmmm. The starting place I might choose for a tin wash would be to mix some tin with a flux suited to the firing temperature you’re working at, and place containers or test tiles with chrome at strategic points in the kiln. It doesn’t take much for flashing effects to happen, even in a plain ol’ electric firing.

Tin is sort of a weird one. We use it as an opacifier, but it needs to be in a certain concentration before it works that way so using it as a wash would be less effective than other things. But it reacts with other things like chrome to flash pink, and it can act to clarify reduction glazes at cone 10. Are you looking for a white wash of some kind, or are you looking to use one of the other properties of tin?

What clay body are you working on, and what temperature were the pieces bisqued to? Also, what temperature was the pre fire done to?

According to the Gelli Arts website, you can use oil based paints on a gelli plate, but you shouldn’t leave them sitting too long, because it’ll soften the plate. Link to their FAQ here. So if you work quickly, and clean up right away, you might be all right. That’s assuming you’re using a store bought one, and not making one out of gelatin yourself. I have not done this myself, but would a gelatin based plate work better with an oil based printing medium? My quick search turned up this blog specifically on Making your own gel plates. The comments section is a wealth of troubleshooting info. I also found this very affordable online course through the Ceramic School, taught by Shawna Pincus. She does underglaze printing for the most part and is amazing at it. But she would also potentially be a person to reach out to for some technical info.