Pyewackette
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Posts posted by Pyewackette
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@Rae Reich I'm a super dry thrower - I often leave NO water at all in the splash pan. In fact of late I prefer not to use a splash pan at all except for trimming - because without it, trimmings fly all over the place. Otherwise the splash pan just gets in my way. I really am the driest thrower I've ever seen, to the point where I have to kind of check myself and use MORE water than I'm first inclined to use.
I also usually only use sponges to move water, either in or out. Lots of people seem to throw with sponges in their hand - I'm not one of them. And I've gotten MUCH better at having even walls, something I struggled with until we got these new clay bodies and I could stop using the perpetually short studio clay body they make here.
However I still feel like I'm pretty slow. Maybe that's part of it. Also the form I've been favoring for awhile now is a flared out shallow bowl with very straight sides. It's pretty gravity defying to start with. However however I am also struggling with vase shapes in the 3 to 4 lb range.
Possibly I also need to experience some success with these forms in another clay body as I've made a medium sized bowl as described in one of the new stonewares at the studio (but I only had a bowl sized sample of that available). I keep hoping the new stonewares will arrive soon, so far it is always "next week". This week's next week hasn't happened yet either LOL!
I'm faster now but it isn't anything I would actually call "fast" - I am not doing a John Britt 6 bowls in 3 minutes thing by a long shot. So possibly I've just got my hands on the clay too long, still.
Frankly I was shocked I could throw in porcelain at all, given how I've struggled with the studio clay over the past 2 or 3 years. I about gave up hope.
I've seen people on youtube using heat guns on porcelain forms in the size range I'm attempting. I'm really not a heat gun fan but thought maybe I was being too intransigent on this issue in the case of porcelain. I'll keep trying - sans heat guns.
Thanks.
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@Min I've been looking into making my own batmate and neoprene is one of the things I wanted to try. I had been wondering if I could use it the way you use yours. Why waste a bat on that? I trim directly on the wheelhead anyway. If I can slap a neoprene disk down so much the better!
How thick is your neoprene?
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I was too busy DOING my non-ceramic plans this past summer to see this. I spent the entire summer in my garden or babysitting my grandson after his babysitter quit - often both simultaneously. My grandson loved it when we went to my house to do "water for the plants".
The first time I took him with me he played for awhile and then suddenly sat down and started crying. What is wrong I asked. "No grass" he said.
True, it was all plants, trellises, walkways, and mulch.
My favorite scene with him was when I pointed out some bottle gourd to him. He was fascinated. He sat down under the trellis-tunnel and kept pointing at bottle gourds saying "I got bottle gourd. COOK bottle gourd!"
I still have peas out there but most everything else has died, except the fennel.
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I trim foot rings almost exclusively, but they don't always look the same. Sometimes I use a foot trimmer thingy like the one Dirty Girls makes. I still trim inside it. I cut a line into the clay above the foot as a glaze catcher. If a piece has a flat bottom that is a sure sign I made the bottom to thin.
I once had an instructor who attempted to push me away from trimming footrings. He was quite insistent. I was quite intransigent on the issue. I won. It's my work. Plus the guy sells his pitchers for like $200 a pop - if you're getting $200 a pop you have time to trim a foot ring IF YOU WANT TO. I certainly don't get $200 (or anything at all) for a piece but I will still trim a foot ring because I WANT TO.
As for the dishwasher thingy, lots of machine made stuff does the same spill-the-icky-dishwater-all-over-the-silverware thing. If I ever sell a piece, I will be recommending against putting it in the dishwasher. If you do it anyway, its on you to counteract that.
- Hulk and Bill Kielb
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I'd like to be a sprayer but boy those spray booths are spendy, and I seem to be the wrong kind of handy to try to build one. I don't grok pumps!
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.... when making larger items, do you make use of a heat gun or torch to keep your piece from flopping?
Or is there a better method of Going Big with Porcelain?
(Honestly at this point "big" to me just means bigger than a tea bowl, larger bowls, good sized platters, not 2' tall vases per se)
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@AnnaShipulina What is SEO?
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On 11/17/2017 at 7:48 AM, Guest said:
Check out how this person raises his walls
@Pres He does this because he has carpal tunnel. I'm told its actually easier on your wrists if you do it "right". I can't do it at all, let alone until it hurts, LOL!
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2 hours ago, Hulk said:
A small amount of Nerd's reclaim mix makes a noticeable difference in four to five gallons of reclaim slurry, in my experience.
I'd tried between a quarter to third cup of the recommended mixture, eight parts of silica, one part OM4 ball clay, one part feldspar.
Now I'll use it if the reclaim contains significant amounts of re-reclaim and/or re-re-claim...@glazenerd @Hulk Duly Noted and Bookmarked as Glazenerd's Reclaim Booster
Oh yeah and assuming that's by weight ...
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Can't afford $200 hotel room x 4 nights LOL!
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@Hulk BTW what's "powderboard"?
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I've found cell phone cameras (or at least the ones I've had access to) tend to distort the image if its not dead-on and centered - and maybe then as well. I have a real digital camera with video capability (Pentax, Canons are probably easier to get accessories for) that I would use for something like that instead.
If you do go with a cell phone camera use it in landscape mode. Portrait mode sux for video, its just tall and skinny and weird looking to me.
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@neilestrick Stoneware is preferred for bonsai pots. There are porcelain bonsai pots and likely I will make some, but bonsai growers like to have a rough interior bottom as they say it enhances root growth and/or gives roots something to grab on to. Porcelain doesn't really lend itself to that. Also a lot of glaze effects look better or are easier to get on an iron bearing clay body. That is also not porcelain. So I am not limiting myself to just porcelain.
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@neilestrick I'll grant you the porcelain, I've only ever thrown with ONE porcelain body and that for less than a month LOL! I bow to your superior knowledge and experience.
However it also seems to be easier to find clay bodies with less than 1% absorption in cone 10. That's an issue for bonsai pots and I want to get into bonsai pots. Another reason for the atmospheric stuff, I think it looks better on tea bowls and bonsai pots, my two main interests (plus Big Stuff).
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26 minutes ago, Hulk said:
However, not practically possible at our previous home, same here at our new/current home.
Eggsackly. It may not even be possible wherever I end up. Plus there's the DIL's anxiety to overcome.
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@Callie Beller Diesel Well its certainly been an expense so far!
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@Rae Reich What no Valdemarts (Walmart) or $Trees in Orange, CA? Or near?
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@neilestrick Pretty much all of the above. I like the glazes, shinos, etc, the way the same slip or glaze can give you varying results. There's a sort of freeness to it. Glaze results are less constrained and, I feel, more natural. Some people have been able to more or less imitate these results at ^6 in an electric kiln - Shikha Joshi for instance - but at great effort. Shikha Joshi refires her glazed pieces as many as 4 times to get the results she wants.
I'd love to do soda firings but given how it eats away at bricks I probably can't. But I can get close to those sorts of results at ^10 reduction through judicious selection of glazes and firing schedules. I've read about different processes that allege they can achieve similar results but haven't been able to try them, like ash glazes or washes that can help get flashing on a pot without exposing the entire interior of the kiln to soda fumes. I can't try these if I don't have the kiln in which to try them.
And most porcelain fires better (or only) at ^10. If you're going to high fire a lot - and I would certainly like to do that - that's an awful lot of money in elements and other parts (over $900 for an element change in the 4 section Jupiter kilns). Somehow I don't think those elements are going to get any cheaper.
I get that its not an automated process like in an electric kiln. That also has a certain allure for me.
- Hulk and neilestrick
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@Rae Reich I got my pool noodles for $1.25 at $ Tree or 98c at Valdemart. Valdemart only has them in season, but you can usually find them year round at at least some $ Trees (in xmas colors at xmas). They are fatter/thicker than pipe insulation, though I've used pipe insulation as well.
1/2" pipe insulation is currently 1.78 for a 6' section at my local Home Despot. 3/4" pipe insulation isn't available in a 6' length atm, but a package of 4 in 3' lengths is 4.53, or about 1.13 each (2.26 for 6' worth). Neither are as thick and cushy as a pool noodle.
I'm a pool noodle fan. I can fill a 5 gal bucket for watering plants using a pool noodle from my bathroom faucet (right next to my plant room). I used them to stabilize my EMT trellis on 8' T posts (using PVC T's to support the conduit). I stick them on shorter trellises so people don't put an eye out running into an exposed conduit end. I use pool noodles to protect the edges of my bats when I'm schlepping them. I use them to roll up quilts as I'm working on them. Etc etc etc.
Plus - PURTY COLORS!
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Now that you mention it, I wonder about this as well. A lot of figures I've been interested in (trying to) sculpt require some sort of armature, or wire as part of the sculpture itself (like say bird legs). I also wonder if this may be part of the reason some ceramic sculptures I've had in the past were done in low fire earthenware ...
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@Morgan I'm hardly the expert around here, but its my understanding that at some point you need to work some "new" clay into the old and let it age. There's probably a bit more to it than that. So far I have been able to handle my "reclaim" a few pounds at a time, like 10 to 12. For larger amounts, and repeated reclaim, things are probably different.
And no, you're not going to retain ALL the fines - even I don't and I'm the driest thrower I know. That's why working some new clay in helps, as I understand it. If things really get out of whack then you're adding ball clay or whatever is appropriate for the body you're working with, or epsom salts, or Veegum etc etc. Stuff that's beyond me.
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On 3/9/2023 at 5:07 PM, Joseph Fireborn said:
Success is really up to the individual, if you are happy making 10K a year in profits and are securing your lively hood through another manner, congrats you are happy and successful!
If I ever get to the place where I'm clearing 10k a year, I'd be delirious. I might eventually pay off my kiln and other equipment then.
Seriously. I'm afraid I'll end up buried in pots. It'll be like trying to give zucchini away.
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Mark C was noting potential loss of Kemper tools:
But I've been wondering for some time now what's up with Dolan Tools. I haven't been able to buy a Dolan tool since Covid hit, they're always out of stock even on the Dolan website.
Anybody have a clue what's up with that?
Making your functional ware furniture friendly
in Clay and Glaze Chemistry
Posted
Between a (fairly) recent QotW about footrings and the following thread:
Its brought furniture-friendly bottoms back to the forefront of my mind. I try to always have footrings on everything, even if they are flattish footrings, simply because I want to minimize the contact of the bottoms of my ware on furniture surfaces that they might mar. Well, partly. I also just like footrings.
I have 2 different kinds of speckled stoneware coming (soon, I hope), plus other somewhat groggy stonewares. Some of it will end up as planters of one ilk or another, some as functional ware, mostly bowls, yunomi, and tumblers. While a plant pot won't sit directly on a table or sill, its saucer will. I would hate to make a nice planter in speckled clay that has a saucer under it that doesn't match.
I already burnish to push as much grog as possible into the clay body, mostly at rims and bottoms, but it will resurface to some extent during firing anyway. I count on glaze to make up for that at the rims but we don't glaze bottoms.
I've thought of trying to dip bottoms in slip but then there are issues of the slip fitting. We only have one kind of slip in the studio so I would have to make my own.
How do you guys "fix" the groggy-clay/furniture interface?