Callie Beller Diesel

I tend to like abject brain candy when I’m working. I listen to NOTHING that threatens to edify me in any way while I’m in the studio. Just finished off the latest Patricia Briggs audiobook in her Mercy Thompson series. Been waiting for a year to figure out who the heck Sherwood Post really was, and it delivered! I will not spoiler if you are also a fan. Spent most of the summer going through all 4 of Annette Marie’s Guild Codex series in reading order. Sounds like a lot, but they’re only 8 hours each, and they’re like potato chips. You go through them quickly. I love that they’re set in Vancouver, but I do cringe at the reader’s pronunciation of the word toque, and a couple of place names. (The place names I get. But it’s “took” as in the hobbit! Not toke, as in.. nevermind.) Currently looking to trade urban fantasy recommendations. I need a new series.

Okay. I can’t show you a sample of this glaze at the moment because the jug that I used it as a liner on is full of iced tea, lol! But it is softly matte, and does have a little carbon trapping around the rim where soda hit it. It crazed on my clay body at the time, but that may not indicate anything for how it will behave with your materials. I got this recipe from a handout in college, from Sam Kwan when he did a workshop with us. There ARE some slight issues chemically with this recipe, but it’s a starting point, and it is fixable. As written, it’s got a flux ratio of 0.19:0.81, which isn’t ideal for durability. The silica: alumina is 9.81, so that part’s okay. My pitcher seems to be holding up, but it doesn’t get heavy use. Sam Kwan’s celadon (cone 10 R) 34 potash feldspar 27 wollastonite 21 silica 15 grolleg 3 talc add 1% turquoise stain At the time, Sam acknowledged that the community at large considered using stain as a colourant to be “cheating” and that he really didn’t care. It got him the colour he wanted, even on stoneware. Because of the use of stain, it’s much less material sensitive than reduction celadons that use iron. IF you go decide to alter or fix this recipe, or if you are still looking for a more “traditional” celadon that uses iron in some form as a colourant, there’s a few things to keep in mind. Generally speaking, high fire celadons will drift more towards the blue end of the spectrum if they’re used on porcelain, and they’ll drift more towards the green end if you’re putting them on stoneware, or if you use kaolins and feldspars that have iron or titanium trace. Hence the use of grolleg, instead of the more typical EPK. When this recipe was given to me 20 years ago, the general assumption was that grolleg was “cleaner” than EPK, although we didn’t have easy access to comparative materials analyses at the time. The original recipe called for G200 feldspar which isn’t available now, but Mahavir can be substituted, and would be a better choice than Custer. Because talc supplies have become an issue lately and new sources have more iron and titanium, I put the recipe into glazy to see what simply removing it did. The flux ratio improves a hair to 0.21:0.79. The silica:alumina ratio lowers, but only slightly and it’s still in an acceptable range and easily adjusted. The talc may have been in the original recipe because at the time it was a common antidote to crazing. There’s other ways to do that though.

I think on planet Zircon their fuel costs are lower than ours.

If you’re firing MOP, it will look like a pearlescent version of the (shiny) glaze underneath, whatever that happens to be. You did mention it needing to be food safe. That term can be a bit vague, because there’s no legal or technical definition of it when you’re making your own glazes. To simplify for this thread, the usual concerns are with leaching and durability. While MOP probably won’t poison you off, Duncan does say in their guide that it is safe to apply to food surfaces, but it will wear away over time, or with hard scrubbing. It is only a very thin layer of material that’s on the surface of the glaze, not integrated with it. https://www.overglazes.com/PDF/Overglaze-Guide.pdf

Probably not. Using smaller amounts of stain will give you a more translucent effect, but it won’t tint red towards pink.

The industrial filter presses that are for clay production don’t use a bladder. Instead, they pump clay slip horizontally between sheets of canvas and squish the water out. Here’s a youtube video showing a hand crank one from Pewabic, because me describing it doesn’t do it justice. The physical pressing motion of a ratchet style press rather than the outward pressure of a bladder wine press would more closely approximate this action. If you’re trying to build a small footprint clay reclaim setup that’s essentially a slow, gravity fed filter press, there’s also this article. (if you don’t have a Ceramics Monthly subscription, you can still read 3 articles free a month.) This is what inspired me to just spread my reclaim on a sheet over my existing wire racking. But if footprint is your problem, building small but stackable frames could be a workable solution. I’d be really curious to see how that turns out.

If I had to hazard a guess, they’re using a glaze and wipe technique. Probably with some kind of dense sponge.

There used to be a store set up like you’re describing in Calgary, one that sold glazes, lustres, china paints and decorating stuff, but no clay, dry materials or equipment. She retired a couple of years ago, but did quite well. So you are describing a proven business model. Nancy’s clientele was a lot of learners and hobbyists who relied on bottled glazes, and the china painting groups. She had the best selection of underglazes in town. And for a while, it was the only local place to get lustres and china paint, because Ceramics Canada didn’t carry them. (They started selling gold when she closed down.) As to your question about what frustrates me, that’s a little tricky to answer, because I think it depends on what point in your pottery making adventures you’re at. My pain points as someone with a lot of experience now is very different than what I was frustrated with when I was starting out. And I have always mixed my own glazes, so I’m probably not your ideal customer. I’d be more likely to come to you if, hypothetically, I was interested in adding china paint to my work and needed help with that because they didn’t cover that in my college courses. Or less hypothetically, if you sold tissue transfers and stock decals that I didn’t have to buy out of the States. None of the other regional suppliers carry them. What I can say from observing a lot of questions here over the years though, is that folks come in with a lot of questions about how to fix glaze flaws. Even though commercial glazes and underglazes are set up to be as easy to use as possible, the key words there are “as possible.” And it’s tricky to troubleshoot that stuff, because the recipes are proprietary. If you can offer technical help based on skill and experience, that would be very valuable.

I’ve done it, and I know the pain of that realization! At least the fix is straighforward.

I did mix when I was young and still held illusions about how easily I could access a soda kiln after college. And time on my hands, because I had no kids. In college I did most of my work in a soda kiln, and had access to equipment, so I mixed my own clay body. It was a white stoneware that had Tile 6 kaolin a little red art and some grog added to it. It came out of the bisque the colour of a pink school eraser, and flashed some lovely yellows, pinks and oranges, so naturally I wanted to keep using it. However after I graduated, there was a distinct lack of a soda kiln, a large enough scale to weigh out 100kg batches, a Soldner mixer or pug mill in my life. So I had to modify my recipe a bit. My supplier sells dry bags of a white stoneware that also comes in box form, because some people like to also use it for slipcasting. So I’d take a full bag of that and add 5% red art and 5% fine grog in one of those big blue beer tubs from the garden centre. I slurry mixed it and dried it out in pillow cases on a concrete patio slab behind my rental house. Because no light got to this area ever, there was only about a 4 month window in the year where I could dry it out there effectively. I stored it for a couple of months before I used it so it would age. I kept it in rolls in plastic bags for those trash holders that attach to the cupboard door under the sink, and would just wedge the heck out of it before I used it. I was not making very much work at all, and only did it sporadically for a number of years. Having kids actually made me have to really examine how badly I wanted to spend my time on what activity. Mixing clay was entirely too much of a nuisance for very little tangible result in work I could really only fire in a regular gas kiln at a city run arts centre. So I just started buying the white stoneware I’d been modifying in the premixed boxes. On a side note, I probably make more work in a year now than I did in the 5 after I graduated. It wasn’t just not having to mix clay, but it was a factor.

This is making me think that it’s more likely something that’s happening in the forming stages, and the ones that work may still have hidden flaws. According to Hamer and Hamer, dunting often starts with how a piece is made, whether it happens in the cooling or on the heat up. One way to confirm this would be to take any bisqued pieces you have and do a ping test. Just flick it and see if it rings or if it clicks. Click=crack you can’t see.

I’m leaning towards loading error, not glaze ingredient. That looks like shelf wash crumbs. They’re dry and refractory, and sitting on top of the glaze, not coming up from within it. If it is shelf wash, yes, you can try grinding them down a bit, dabbing a little bit of glaze back on and re-fire. And be extra careful to give the shelves a light brush with your hand before you place them.

Not for sure, but they look a little like broken terra cotta roof tiles. Could be that they’re using some kind of waster they just had around. I imagine that you could cut some from wood if that’s the material you have to hand.

We did this in college. I can confirm this is very hard on your body, and I was 23 the last time I did it. Soldner doesn’t seem to have believed in such frivolities as excess clothing or equipment ergonomics. Reaching into that barrel repeatedly to lift out heavy stuff in the name of lifestyle isn’t my jam: I don’t like mid to lower back pain. I agree with Kelly that it’s something you should do once, and decide from there if you want to keep doing it. If it’s just down to money, you need to math out the costs vs benefits for your own situation. While you’d be getting 20-23% more clay if you get dry mix, you’d be giving up the time in the form of days you’re taking to mix it. You’re also paying in terms of wear and tear on your body, especially your back. Does the unit price savings justify your added prep time and potential for injury? I’m not assuming the answer is no here. It might be a perfectly good, cost effective answer for you. How critical is that exact clay body to your work? Can it be substituted with something more easily sourced, or is it just that you’re far away from everything? If prepared clay drying out is a concern, Mark has mentioned in the past that he gets his supplier to mix half of his order a bit softer to counteract this. Does your supplier offer this as an option?

I have some thoughts on this, but I’ll start a new thread on it. I accidentally went viral on Tiktok last year. Not in an “I stuck my foot in it” way, more of an “I really wasn’t expecting that” way.

I think Etsy, social media and in person shows are both means to an end: building a clientele. They’re different tools, but if used properly they both yield results. It’s a matter of what your own strengths and likes are, and what kind of timeframe you expect results in. They all work over time. I know 2 in person couples that started off their careers 10-15 years ago doing shows, but have switched quite successfully to full time incomes earned with online sales. Initially the move was supposed to be temporary, but they’ve found online selling to be less stressful for them. If you do the same show for 30 years, you build a clientele there that expects to find you there, so that’s where they show up. Not every shopper that attends that show will buy from you however, and you wouldn’t expect them to, You get enough of them though, and so you go back. Ideally you sell them something using personal skills, and get them to sign up for your email newsletter so they know when/where to be able to find you again when they want more. If you’ve vetted your shows and the organizer is a good one, they take care of your marketing. In the beginning, it takes time to weed through and find the shows that work for you. But in person shows involve having more capital investment and a delay on seeing any return on it. You can have spent thousands on booth fees, a booth setup, travel costs, more stock, physical labour, etc, and be really in trouble if the show gets called due to a big storm. With shows, there’s also a delay in betyou may have thousands of dollars set aside or paid out for booth fees before you see a dime. Your profit margins can vary because of this. If you use Etsy like a search engine with the goal of getting in front of an audience, the same thing applies. Instead of a show organizer doing the marketing though, you have to be able to use SEO and metadata to find enough people in the shopper base that like your stuff. Just like with an in person show, you wouldn’t expect all of Etsy’ shoppers to buy from you**. Once someone makes a purchase from you, your responsibility is to now make their experience one they want to repeat, and hopefully get them to sign up for your email list* to make said repeat purchase easier. Etsy is pretty affordable, even with all the new fee additions, and it’s a low barrier to entry. It’s much less physical labour/travel, packing materials are cheaper than building a booth setup to start, and you don’t have to have nearly as much stock as you would for an in person show. As long as you’ve got your work priced appropriately, your profit margins on each item are predictable, and most costs associated with the platform (shipping, Etsy fees other than listing fees) are only incurred after the item is purchased. But you’re at a disadvantage if and when the platform decides to change it’s terms, which it does with some regularity. You don’t own your audience on Etsy until you add them to your email list and they become clientele. If you use social media to get in front of people and funnel them to your own website, you have to use both personal skills to sell something AND create an experience that makes people want to come back to you AND you have to be good at using the algorithm to get in front of people. And you have to have an appealing and user friendly website to send them to. Some people are super comfortable on social media. They like being able to control the interactions and only show themselves and their work to their best advantage. Others find it performative and weird. Again, you want to get customers on your mailing list so that you can communicate more directly and aren’t at the mercy of algorithms or shifts in the type of content you’re expected to provide. On the pro side, social media marketing can also be a low monetary investment to entry, low physical labour component, and you can do it with relatively few items. The cons are that it does involve a lot of ongoing learning, being consistent, and generally putting in a LOT of effort over time. It’s definitely a long game. But sometimes that long game allows beginners to hone their craft, or for people to grow their media literacy and related tech skills. *As of this writing, Etsy’s Seller Policy does allow you to invite people to sign up for your email list, but you may not add them without permission. As an international platform, its worth noting that Etsy, and therefore Etsy sellers, are held to GDPR standards if they have customers in the EU. **As a side note, with 96.3 active Etsy shoppers in 2021, I don’t think that the market is saturated. I do think that search engine optimization is a different skill set than being able to talk to people in person. Some people are better at one than they are the other.

Mark made himself a central vac system for his studio, so that it was vented outdoors and kicking up dust was a non-issue. Maybe overkill for a small basement studio, but still good to keep in the back of your head, I think. Here’s the link to the old thread: https://community.ceramicartsdaily.org/topic/13995-central-vacuum-for-clay-studio/

I agree with Kelly that the most likely culprit is technique and timing. IF the issue were related to fresh clay vs reclaim, the only way I could see reclaimed clay being less shiny is if it was used for throwing practice, and the throwing slop wasn’t added back into the clay. Your throwing slop is where a lot of the finest clay particles wind up, and the lack of them could affect a burnished surface. You’d also maybe notice your clay being short if this was the case.

I find I do better with in-person customer contact too. I like talking to people who like my stuff. I also find that a hard deadline where I’m beholden to someone that I have to look in the face is much more compelling to meet than an arbitrary one I set for an online sale.

Haven’t used stainless, but did use mild steel as moulds for slumping glass for a project at an art glass place I used to work at. Mild steel melts at 2570F. Glass slumping is done at much lower temperatures than we work with clay at, about 12-1300 F. Even then the moulds would spall, and we had to protect the glass so it didn’t pick up black flakes of metal when it was soft. Bill’s article mentions spalling too, as well as changes in the material’s working properties after being heated and cooled. The spalling might not matter if the metal stains don’t show up on, or better yet, are incorporated into your end piece like with Oldlady’s friend. The metal flakes can stain kiln shelves at glass temperatures. I don’t know when they’d melt enough to cause damage in a pottery kiln.

Hi and welcome to the forum! In the unlikely event anyone is mean they’ll have me and the other mods to answer to, but you have nothing to worry about there. We get a lot of beginners around here, and the group is pretty fantastic and wants to help. From your image, I don’t think you have much to worry about regarding your bricks either. All of the joints look tight, and it looks clean and like it’s barely been used. A little cracking or small pits in the brick are not cause for concern: the soft brick will still insulate very well. The repairs you show are in the middle of the kiln and look pretty tidy to me. From the size, the damage might not have even interfered with the kiln’s performance noticeably if you’d left them. If there were chunks missing around the edge, that might cause heat leakage and slow the firing bit, but you’d be surprised what your equipment can do. As long as you didn’t get any cement on the elements, I see nothing wrong there. Even if you did, just clean it off before you fire it.

Hi and welcome to the forum! So much of what can happen depends on the formulation of the clay body in question. I haven’t worked with Standard clays specifically, but I can give you some generalizations while we wait for someone who has to chime in. As a rule, if you’re firing a cone 6 clay only to cone 5, it won’t be as vitreous or mature as expected, or will be on the lower end of the range the manufacturer gives. If you’re making functional ware, you do want to be mindful of your absorbency rates so you don’t wind up with pots that weep or get mildew stains on the unglazed portions. Even if a manufacturer gives you an expected fired absorbency, it’s a good idea to make a test bar and run your own test to verify you’re reaching <0.5% with your firing cycle. Here’s a link to Digitalfire with test instructions, and some expanded reading on why this is a good idea. If you overfire any clay body, at some point it will bloat, and if you go far enough, it’ll melt entirely. What point that happens at will depend on the clay body. Some have more wiggle room than others. Most pottery kilns won’t generate enough heat to fully melt a cone 10 stoneware, but the results of putting an earthenware into a cone 10 firing has made many a kiln tech get very, very inventive with their adjectives.

If you’ve ever worked in a clean as you go kitchen, if you have ADHD or you’re a primary care parent, you know that taking care of a small mess more often is easier than cleaning up a big one later. But there’s a line between constantly wiping and being efficient with how you work. In kitchens, they tell you to clean up between tasks, with a good scrub (floor mopping) at the end of the night (work session). I totally agree with Hulk, make it easy to do that cleanup regularly. Have a bucket and sponge handy to wipe surfaces with, and change your cleaning implement often. It’s easier to sponge out your splash pan while it’s still wet. It’s easier to keep your reclaim bucket next to your wheel when you trim, so you can empty the tray right into it. It’s easier to work in a way that trimmings or bits and blobs are gathered or wiped up easily, so they wind up in your reclaim and not on the floor. It’s easier to throw with only the water you need, so again you avoid spatter on the floor. I usually wash my throwing towels and apron after they’ve been used for a session. Thrift store towels for the win! ***I have a pair of studio shoes that never leave the room. They go on my feet at the door, and get taken off at the door. Being really rigid with that is the big one. This keeps dust from getting tracked through your living space. I tend to clean my shoe soles when I mop, but I don’t wipe them otherwise.*** Mopping is the one that is a big job, and no avoiding it. I have a concrete floor, so I pour down about 5 gallons of water and wipe it up with my mop and wringer. BUT I have a system for that, a la KC Davis’s closing duties approach to cleaning. Reclaim and trimming days, I mop immediately after, because usually I have more energy left. Glaze days, I know I’m exhausted after because it’s a longer and more draining day. Rather than leave myself a complete disaster though, I wipe the main surfaces, put dirty glaze utensils/sieves/etc into a bucket of water so they don’t dry out, and I shut the door so that nothing is getting tracked out. When the kiln is firing/cooling the next morning, I go downstairs and do the thorough cleanup, including a mop. Unless something gets really out of hand, I usually don’t mop after throwing sessions. My wheel area is set up so the spatter zone isn’t facing any pathways that I’d be tracking through while doing other tasks. I make very little spatter because of my throwing habits, so I don’t feel worried about leaving mopping for trimming day. Edited to add: to avoid more spatter on reclaim day, I clamp a cloth over 2/3 of the opening to my clay bin. It makes for a LOT less wiping of walls due to the jiffy mixer. Again, just a piece of thrift store sheet.

Oh man. The end of an era, for sure! I’m glad your last trip there was such a good one, barring the head cold.

Tony’s experiment with kiln shelves was pretty cool, but I think it’s more of a “check out this cool thing this material does” exercise. My supplier’s current price for a 50 lb bag of zircopax is about $350 Canadian. The largest full round shelf they sell as a stock item (26.5”x 3/4”) is less than half that.