Callie Beller Diesel

That kiln is likely 20-30 years old, if it lacks any electronic components. I don’t know how many firings you put on it, or the person who owned it before you did, but I’ve got over 200 firings on my elements and they’re still going strong. Kiln bricks, unless they get scratched up or physically damaged. For the price of a new set of elements and maybe a switch, you get essentially a brand new kiln. Granted, an analog model, but they do last. It’s good value for the money.

You don’t specify your chamber size, and that can make a difference. If your 3 cu ft kiln isn’t reaching cone 6 in 12 hours, that would indicate more element wear than it would in a larger, tightly packed kiln. My manual 7 cu ft kiln takes a good 10 hours to hit top glaze temps, and that’s not unreasonable. edited to add: you can also get your kiln specs from the manufacturer, and find out from there what the resistance level is supposed to be on new elements. If you have a meter, you can check how far off the elements are from the original and see what the wear is.

Not at all! Cone 10 reduction celadons are like the Little Prince’s Rose, or the Princess and the Pea: sensitive creatures that notice minute changes. Switch one feldspar out for another, or use ball clay instead of kaolin, and you’ll wind up with a noticeably different shade, even if it stays within the blue/green colour family. Thickness differences are very noticeable, and if applied wrong, they’ll show every drip mark or scratch. On the plus side, they highlight carved textures quite beautifully. Even a simple recipe like Leach 4321 base will vary if you switch a material, or if it gets hit with ash in a wood kiln. Put that same base over a white stoneware vs a grolleg porcelain and the stoneware will be a Koryo dynasty green, but the porcelain will give you something far more robin’s egg blue. I haven’t gone as in-depth into tenmoku glazes so I can’t enumerate the exact differences between them, but celadons can be very colour responsive. They’re just subtle changes within a specific chromatic range.

I don’t think the artist who made the pot in your supplied image is applying overglaze: I think they’re just putting a leaf on a glaze that’s got the right chemistry to be inclined to turn that gold colour when the ash from the leaf melts into the right spot. Some of the colour response is going to come from the change in the fluxes in that really localized area, and some of it would come from the additional iron, chrome and manganese. And phosphorous. Joe at Old Forge Creations did this blog post last September about some chemistry explorations he did with a black tenmoku recipe that formed yellow crystals. He was fine tuning the rate of iron crystals by altering the amount of magnesium and calcium. There’s more, but that’s the Cole’s notes version if you don’t want to read the blog. If you look at the image in Peter’s reply just above mine here, you can see that there are tiny yellow specks in the glaze, meaning that one is probably already susceptible to turning that particular gold colour. Adjusting the localized chemistry with ash from a botanical that contains magnesium is enough to push the glaze in the right direction. Could happen in either oxidation or reduction I would think.

I also think that your customers don’t need the gory details of your pricing formula. Its not that I think we need to lie about things or not be transparent when necessary. It’s that presenting any additional charges, whether it’s adding shipping to checkout or sales tax or credit card fees, is drawing unnecessary attention to something no one really likes. It generates a feeling of misrepresentation when you keep adding things to the price tag, and that can be really frustrating (or worse) for some. I don’t want my customers frustrated, I want them happy so they come back. I don’t want to generate more opportunities for myself to have to smooth ruffled feathers.

If you were to put the sand in a tray, it would run the risk of cracking like any waster or cookie I would think. Not bad for the clay piece, but might not save on a lot of the cleaning. But if the piece is of a size where it’s practical, just using a whole shelf instead of a half shelf would do the same thing. You’d have to have a wide enough container to tip the sand into, but that’s pretty doable.

I’m not trying to discourage you at all. I do see how a tabletop mixer could be handy. However like yourself, the only ones that fit that size description that have enough torque would be for the cosmetics industry or for industrial food production (Blizzards!) and they seemed expensive, as was already pointed out. So maybe we need to come at this problem from another angle. You’re still going to have to build something yourself in al likelihood. We all use heavy duty drills for a reason: the motors are a nice weight and they have the right amount of torque. So what about building a portable mount for the drill, cutting down the paint mixing bit so it’s shorter, and rigging a timer switch with a Christmas light timer? edited to add: I know there is a lot of duct tape and baling wire in this solution. Anyone who wants to smooth off the edges may do so as they please.

The farm duty motor is for a “one and done” build for a mixer that would handle 5 gallon /20L or larger buckets. That’s not for the table top one. It’s going to be overkill for most. That build is a product of it’s environment as well. Medicine Hat is a small city surrounded by hundreds of km with flat land used for farming and ranching. That kind of motor is easily available there, and there’s also a lot of welders/machinists who would be willing to build a simple rig like that for a friend. And a couple hundred dollars and a six pack of craft beer to your neighbour’s brother is cheaper than the $1500 entry level one at the lab equipment supply place.

I think there’s nothing wrong with increasing your prices to reflect increased business costs, which credit card fees definitely are. But from a customer service standpoint, and even a general professionalism one, I think it’s better to just roll it in. 1) I don’t want to put myself or an employee in a position that sets up angry “what the heck is this extra fee? Are you trying to scam me?!” conversations. There is a segment of the population that just wants to fight with retail workers, and I have no patience for being on the receiving end of it anymore. It’s best to prevent as many scenarios like this as possible. 2) An itemized list of all of my expenses is really none of my customer’s business. They don’t need the gory details.

I don’t have the physical space to have a pug mill, so I make sure my slurry is really smooth before laying it out. Cuts down a lot on the wedging afterwards.

Our banking laws are different here, and we’re not allowed to add a POS surcharge onto card sales. I’ve always viewed credit card fees as part of my COGS, and just incorporated it into the sticker price. I’ve seen a few people offer cash discounts, but that’s becoming more and more rare. Taxes are taxes, and the government gets bent at me in ways I don’t like if I don’t collect and remit.

I lay mine on a thrift store bedsheet on the racking. Got the idea from seeing some folks who were digging and processing their own clay. They built wooden frames with hardware mesh that they then laid fabric on. The frames were stackable, so they didn’t need to take up a lot of space.

I do mine on wire shelves, not metal shelves. The idea is lots of surface exposure for water to evaporate from. (And you’re welcome. Glad it helped!)

I have really hard water. I have to descale my kettle probably twice a month, but I’ve never known it to affect my wheelhead. To get lime scale you have to evaporate a few gallons of water, not the amount you throw with. I used to get similar discolouration when I was using a cone 10 porcelaneous stoneware, but if you clean your wheelhead it doesn’t really form. I haven’t had any since I’ve switched to red clay. If it got bad, I’d occasionally take some 220 grit black sandpaper to it, but mostly it wasn’t an issue.

You can do this, but it can irritate your skin later.

@Pyewackette if you have a few dollars to spend on it, Rose and Matt Katz have several colleges level online glaze course that goes as in depth as you could like at Ceramic Materials Workshop, There are bundles, and options that allow you to do a lecture-only version for somewhat less money. They also have a podcast called For Flux’s Sake that has some good free info too.

To make the kiln taller so you can fire more pieces, or taller ones.

I live somewhere dry, so algae isn’t ever something I’ve had to deal with. But I’ve left reclaim in storage for years, when I was in between studio spaces. I just kept it in 5 gallon buckets with the lids on tight. Bags will work well as long as they don’t have holes and aren’t moving it around a bunch. If you’re slurry mixing your reclaim, you don’t need to lay it on plaster to get it to dry. You can hang it in an old pillowcase, or you can lay out a thrift store sheet on a wire shelf and spread your reclaim slip on that. Your slurry shouldn’t be completely fluid if you’re doing it up like this. If space is a consideration, you don’t need to keep your dried pieces, trimmings and wet slop in separate buckets. You can combine them into one. While bone dry clay does slake faster than leather hard stuff, it’ll all get there given time. When you say you’ve got wet waste clay, I assume that’s the pots that got too mushy, plus your throwing slop. You need to add the fine particles from the throwing slop back into the rest of the clay, or you’ll find your reclaim is short.

I started out with more material knowledge, because my first glaze chem instructor taught the class more like cooking than like chemistry. I drove the man nuts because I wanted more scientific answers, and he didn’t have them to give me. I started off with Clay and Glazes for the Potter, and did a few longhand UMF calcs. I’ve always had a good grasp on proportion and ratio math, which is all we’re really working with. I didn’t get too in depth with the math then, because I did’t have easy access to materials analyses to do them for everything. This was also around 2000-2001. I really disliked making so many test tiles, because while there’s something to be said for the hands on method, repeating the same thing that’s been done and documented so well somewhere else seemed like a waste of time. But I didn’t really know where to access that information. Where I’m at, no one was really using glaze software in my earlier days. It existed and I knew other people used it, but no one I knew personally did. I enjoy chemistry and I wasn’t satisfied with what I knew, so about 10 years ago I sat through all of Tony’s tutorials on Insight, and figured out how to use it. I still have a subscription there, but at the time I found the learning curve on the software steep. I found Glazy much easier to figure out, but at this point I don’t know if that’s because I already knew materials and how to use one glaze calc software already. Both those programs do have manuals that teach you how to use them. That said, I like Digitafire’s database better, because it’s got more materials provenance and links to some additional information. I think if I was starting out all over again, I’d want to start with a high school understanding of chemical reactions being a matter of proportions between the individual molecules, and the idea that if a glaze falls within certain proportional ranges, it *should* behave in a certain way. Also, acknowledging that the math will narrow down your test field, but not eliminate it entirely. I’d then move to Glazy as a software, but go and read about each material in my chosen glaze on Digitalfire to understand what was going on more. I’d also add Hamer and Hamer to the reference list. If I wanted to go beyond that, I’d take Matt Katz’s course.

Shelf protectors like that are sometimes called wasters because they’re not expected to survive. If you’re making them out of a stoneware you know to be more refractory than the earthenware you’re testing, shrinkage isn’t going to be a big issue. But consult with the head tech person at your studio to see how they want you to work that. It’s their equipment, and they may have preferences. If you liked Tony’s articles on glaze and clay experiments, you’re gonna love the materials listings he’s got. Here’s the link for talc, and the why’s and wherefore’s of its use in ceramics. https://digitalfire.com/material/talc . It’s usually added to low and mid fire clay bodies to help with thermal expansion/glaze fit, but there’s other stuff too. Digitalfire is a godsend to us all, as is the Glazy calculator. You’d also like the Potter’s Dictionary by Hamer and Hamer. Although that book is a bit of a spend, it’s worth every penny.

“Should be vitrified” isn’t “I tested it under my own firing conditions to make sure”. Stuff is getting into the pinholes, and possibly under the glaze. There is an ick factor here for sure. If this is just a personal piece, you might try re-firing it to see if the pinholes needed a little more heat work to clear. It’ll also burn out those black spots.

I went from initial intro to clay in HS straight into a college program, so early on I was taught to consider whether or not any given form needed trimming, and if so, why. My instructors also tended to frown on too much trimming as they said it was a sign of poor throwing skills. There’s a lot of technical reasons why that last might not be true, and lots of pottery making traditions where that attitude would be considered patently absurd. There’s also some forms that are easier to make or are more structurally sound if you throw them thick and trim afterwards. Think very wide serving pieces with a shallow interior curve. But if you’ve got a nice box of pre-prepared clay formulated for throwing, you don’t need to trim a foot ring onto every mug you make unless it’s a design element. Recentering a piece takes time, and if the design is served well by simply rounding the edges and smoothing the bottom with a silicone rib, why take on the extra work? It’s less work in the long run to get your walls and bottoms even in the throwing. I was taught to view foot rings either as a functional necessity (to allow drainage on a berry bowl for instance), or as a pedestal to elevate or give visual lightness to a piece. A consciously chosen design element. I do put foot rings on most serving pieces, and a couple of teacup-inspired mug designs, and any bowl with a curved interior. I find other ways of finishing the bottoms of other mug designs, storage jars, or anything with a more angular transition from horizontal to vertical. Any flat bottomed pot still gets some form of finishing, it just might not be with a Do-all.

It’s a problem with trying to teach strangers anything on the internet, for sure. We need to know where people are starting from to give them useful-to-them instructions, and not everyone starts from the same place. Just like any other thread on this forum, I hope anyone who needs more clarification will tag the poster they’d like more info from.

Okay. To add a third option that has nothing to do with Mac or Apple, and is available on Android (version 9 and higher) and IPhone, I’d like to introduce the Snapseed app. Most people take their pictures on their phones these days, and having an editing app right where you work is very handy. It’s a google property, so it’s ad free and no cost. I personally find very intuitive to use, and it has a very low learning curve. Unlike programs meant for desktops, it doesn’t have a lot of functions you don’t use frequently, and as a result is less confusing. If you’re writing your post on a desktop, you can do the typing on your keyboard, and after you save, log into the forum from your phone’s internet browser and edit your post to add in the photo. *most newer phones will offer you the option of choosing your file size when you go to upload the image. Small or medium works just fine.* But. If your phone doesn’t do that, you can resize your pic like this: Download snapseed from wherever you get your apps, and allow it to access your photos when prompted. 1. Before you open your photo, tap the three dots at the top right corner of the screen. 2. Settings>Image Sizing, and select 800 px (the default is no resize). That’s the # of pixels on the largest side of your image. Making this number small will only affect image quality if you try to print this picture off. The resolution on your computer screen shouldn’t chang, but smaller images load faster for those with spotty internet. 3. Return to the menu and open your photo. 4. The option to export is at the bottom. It offers a few ways to save. I usually “save a copy,” so I can edit the original multiple ways, but save works fine if you don’t need the original for anything else. 5. Your smaller image will be saved in your photos file. If you want to crop or do other edits, I can do other tutorials in the business section, but I want to keep this simple. (shameless dog content credit goes to Bruiser, the Boston pug X studio “helper”)

The phrase that’s standing out in your original question is “I don’t know what I don’t know.” That would be the thing to fix first. If I hand only $100 to spend on something to make my photography better in the early days, I’d head to Skillshare and take a course on photography lighting for product photos. The tent is like a specific kitchen tool: great for one job, and if you do a lot of that job, they’re worth owning. But if you’re doing more stuff for social media, they have limited use. I actually find the tents cumbersome BUT. My advice is given with the caveat that I don’t apply to juries or publications until after I’ve forgotten about how much the last round annoyed me, or about every 2 years-ish. I do a lot more website/social media photography, and the best practices are different. If you’re doing more plain background images photos, the tents are great. My suggestion would be to see if you can borrow from a friend or rent one from your local camera store first, to see if you like using them. If you do enjoy, do what Mark said. But if you don’t like using one, the lighting tents are primarily diffusers, and there’s lots of budget friendly and effective ways to do that. IF you need a quick and dirty diffuser box for temporary or occasional use, Here is an older, but still very good tutorial on how to build and use one. If you want, I can give a description of an easy natural light setup, but this post was turning into a novel. Photography gadgets that I do get WAAAAAAAY more use out of: a gorilla pod for my phone, figuring out that I can use my headphones as a cable release (IPhone) Snapseed (photo editor), and a course on how to think about lighting an image. Tools for reflecting and controlling light that I use are largely dollar store purchases: the poster board, foamcore and tissue paper. Some may recommend a shinier reflector, and you can use tinfoil over a piece of foamcore. If you are using a fancier camera, you just want the fancier camera versions of the tripod, cable release and editing software (Lightroom). Whatever you use for your rig, you will have to figure out how to edit your images in post. Even if you hit all the boxes and get an image “out of the can” that’s almostperfect, chances are you’ll still have to do some white balancing, or colour correction. If you’re working with your phone, I can’t recommend Snapseed enough. If you have a nicer camera than I do and work on your desktop, it’s worth it to take a course, or at least a few tutorials on how to use Lightroom.