Pyewackette

2, 2.5 lbs I think. I had 13 lbs of the B-mix that I wedged and ended up with about 6 balls. I have 3 left that will be 2 days wedged when I go in today. Its mixed at the studio, not bagged. The stoneware gets pugged and de-aired, the B-mix comes straight out of the mixer. Well I COULD, but if I mess my shoulders up it takes more than a day to recover. I think I can handle 12 or 15 lbs wedged at once - I felt it when I did 13 lbs but then I sat down at the wheel and worked at least another 4 hours without appearing to do long term damage. I'll have to take my own advice and wedge a little bit every time I go in, then set that clay aside to work another day. If I can keep 5 or 6 balls ready to work all the time maybe I can manage. So today I'll wedge up another 12 lbs or so and set it aside for Sunday and just work the 3 balls that are ready for me. Maybe I can spend a little time trying to manage the stoneware after that. I need to learn to work the clay even if its sloppy, I guess. Thanks.

Yeah a few months to go yet. They have identified some places where the programs for my grandson appear to be most likely to be helpful, have a realtor, and got pre-approved for house loans. They are now seriously looking for a house but they expect to run out my grandson's time here in the Good Program, so moving probably in June/very early July, maybe into August. One thing - I'll be about an hour from Bailey. So no worries about finding clay in the area LOL! Bailey is still keeping Covid hours - eg by appointment only - but I'm pretty sure I can "make an appointment" to pick up clay at least, even if you don't get to wander through the store any more. I will be setting up my OWN studio there whenever we get there but that may take a year or even more. The sands in my hour glass are getting pretty low but I keep on tryin' ... I was sooo close this time ... The New Guy is something of a purist, in that he thinks everybody should be wedging everything, and devil take the hindmost. The Old Guard had a different attitude, in that they thought people should be spending their limited studio time actually throwing. They used to always have pugged and de-aired B-Mix, white stoneware, and sometimes red low fire. Now its just the stoneware. So yes - they make it from scratch. And no - they won't put it back through the pug mill. This is apparently the way the new guy wants it. There is a new person (a student from the local college) running the mixer and the pugmill. So that was a learning curve. The new guy changed the supplier and I'm not sure why given the old supplier charged us a fraction of the shipping that the new supplier charges. Maybe something partly Covid related, I don't know. Some ingredients have changed. I'm sure the "recipe" has changed because of that. I KNOW the quality has changed. I'm pretty sure part of the issue with unpugged B-mix is not wanting to clean the pugmill out between clays. I don't know why they've settled on the stoneware as it is. I believe they may be trying to do away with studio B-mix altogether, but I'm just guessing. Since the de facto manager is gone they now have to actually pay somebody for ALL the hours. The de facto manager used to do whatever it took to keep things running smoothly. I don't think they appreciated how much he actually did for free when they passed him over. I miss that guy A LOT. Not only was he a great teacher (not to diss the new guy AT ALL in that regard), but he is the only one there who ever took this over-60 broken down old woman seriously. He took seriously my desire to develop some actual skills so I can actualize whatever artistic sensibilities are still left to me. The rest treat me like an over-60 broken down old woman with delusions. The new guy came in the other day while I was working with the B-mix for the first time, looked at a cup I'd just thrown, and said "Is THAT the FIRST cup you threw with the B-mix???" He clearly thought I wouldn't be able to work with the B-mix given people think its so much harder to work with than stoneware. Well not THIS stoneware, and not for me. I have SO much trouble with the stoneware, everything I've done lately has been so much work for so little reward. He looked like he'd just walked in on his cat laying an egg. And it wasn't even all that great. Their expectations of me are so low it hurts. Anyway, after the changing of the guard, and not having somebody around any more to do all the (largely unpaid) work of keeping things running behind the background, for months - nearly a year - there was NO B-mix at all, let alone pugged and de-aired. Now there are only 2 boxes of B-Mix and it comes straight out of the mixer. Its been so long since I HAD to wedge anything (about 12 years, I've had huge gaps between stints of having access to a studio) that I don't remember how to do the thing where you make it into a vaguely cone shaped thing you can slap on the wheel. I seem to be reintroducing air when I try. Wire wedging is easy (well easiER) - that's the way I was taught to wedge nearly 50 years ago. All this ram's head and spiral stuff first came into my view when I was working at a studio in NC ca 2010ish. I never fully developed the ability to do those. Now my shoulders are shot (though the yoga is hopefully going to help strengthen my lower back). So its both unfamiliar and physically difficult. I'm also stupid short so the wedging table is high for me. Wire wedging would be a lot easier if there were a vertical cutting wire installed but I have to lay mine out on the table and its much slower. I wire wedge to no bubbles but not the 30x Michael Wendt does it. Then I apparently mess it up again trying to form the cones for slapping on the wheel. I really wish I'd bought the pugmill first instead of the kiln. Oh well.

@Callie Beller Diesel Turns out I've been watching that video this past week but mostly this one about pulling up the walls. Centering the wet ball I've got pretty well down. Coning, not too bad. Where I'm failing most often is to keep the work centered over the base. I'll be going along fine and then all of a sudden the cylinder isn't centered any more but the base still is. I've seen people "fix" that but so far I (a) don't know how to avoid it because I don't know what I did to cause it and (b) don't know how to fix it once I've done it. I'm also still working on pulling up the walls in general. I have to fight the urge to just make everything a bowl. I have to consciously think "cylinder NOT bowl" as I'm pulling or it comes out away from the center and wants to be a bowl. I like Florian Gadsby's video on this because I think his method of pulling up towards center would help me to overcome my overwhelming subconscious effort to turn everything into a bowl. I have yet to succeed in pulling a wall straight up let alone in towards the center like that. But I keep on trying ... I must admit to turning the speed up on most videos to 2x, 1.5 if they talk fast enough that I can't understand at double speed. Most people just taaaaaalk soooo sloooooow on those things. I'm a speed reader. I apparently need to be a speed listener as well. I have turned it down to .25x to try to see things better, but then I have to turn off the sound. Just toooo weird with the sound on. It doesn't usually help that much but .... I keep on trying. LOL! Day before yesterday I wedged up about 13 lbs of the B mix. This is, btw, a "special" b mix that isn't supposed to have the problems with glazes that other B mixes seem to have. Anyway. I've still got about half of that left. Didn't go in today to work (just to check my bagged stuff) because its yoga day for me. Trying not to overdo it. But tomorrow I'll have 2 day old wedged B mix. We'll see how that goes.

@Bam2015 You and me both!

@Bam2015, @Babs Sorry - just saw this. It didn't, because of dental implosions. I spent nearly the entire class hopped up on painkillers (I can only take a 1/4th dose or they make me sick) and bouncing from one root canal to the next. All in all I think it was 2 or 3 months. But she says I can do the readings and videos at my leisure. Likely won't happen until after the upcoming move which looks like it'll be sometime around May/June. Or July. Or whenever they find a house they like. The plan is to keep gramma in the basement LOL! Or equivalent. Once I get a safe space set up for it I'll give it another go.

@High Bridge Pottery Sure, but the only place to buy clay within a 5 hour drive IS this studio, LOL!

@Hulk So you are already undergoing what we are still anticipating. Boy do I hate moving! The thing about the wet stoneware is it is REALLY wet. I've seen people roll it into an arch and leave it to sit to dry out a bit and its still not that much improved by the end of class (3 hours). It is SOPPING. I've never seen such wet stoneware. It is MUCH MUCH worse to work with than what I remember of the one time I worked with actual porcelain. However other people seem to be managing, more or less. For me, it thins out too fast in spots and not enough in others - when trying to raise it. This doesn't happen much with the B-mix. It nearly always happens with the stoneware, and right quickly. I can't seem to work it easily or evenly and I have to work it FAST before it collapses on me, so I don't have time to finesse it at all. Plus it is pugged and de-aired and if I have to re-wedge it anyway, might as well put all that physical labor into wedging the B-mix, which I have found to be much preferable to working with the current version of the stoneware. That said, I'm not sure I've been successful with my strategy for wedging the B-mix without really wedging it and I'm not physically capable of wedging it in any great amount on my own. I REALLY wish I'd bought the Pete Pugger first - I could move that and I'd have it to use in the meantime. Oh well. So yesterday I had one of my psuedo-wedged blobs actually keep twisting off while I was trying to cone it up. THREE times (same blob). So I'm not sure what I did wrong there. I've also noticed that there are weird lumpy feelings as I work the stuff, not always, but sometimes, and from the same batch that I just sorta wedged. So not all the clay from a given wedge-batch. I'm wondering how much of my stuff is going to blow up in the kiln. I stack 'n slam until I don't see bubbles when I wire cut it. The problem seems to be when I try to form it into a cone-blob for the wheel. I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong and youtube is no help because people "demonstrating" that, sort of do it blocked by other things and really fast so it looks like it magically forms up for them. As usual for me, bowls come easily. But I keep forcing myself to think "cylinders". Or else how will I ever learn ...

Well maybe if we ever actually had any that weren't short strips I'd feel differently. I'm not sure about the marks issue, but then I generally stick a piece of damp newspaper on top and usually under my work before I bag it. Also I was paying attention today and I tend to try to sort of blow it up like a balloon when I bag stuff. Sort of swirl it around to fill the bag before I swoop it down over my work. I guess that cuts down on the chance of leaving marks on wetware, maybe? If any get on there I must be trimming them off or burnishing them away. I do like me some smooth surfaces - I notice when I don't achieve that. Today I marked a bowl up significantly but it wasn't from bagging it. It was from the lugs I was using while throwing a foot ring. Thunk I, why remove the bowl from the wheel - it's too wet to trim yet but I'll be here for hours and it might be dry enough to trim before I leave. Supremely bad idea. 3 hours later it was still too damp to trim and the rim had somehow sucked the moisture out of the lugs and melded with them. I was trying to smooth those out with my finger. What I learned today ... is I need to learn how to center better and also how to keep my work centered over the base while throwing so I'm not doing stupid things trying to avoid re-centering, LOL!

Well several things, sort of more or less simultaneously. This is probably TMI, but here goes. Around the time Tejas went totally off the deep end with the removal of reproductive rights and on-going threats to access to birth control, my son and DIL discovered that the much-vaunted (by people who live here) "excellence" of public schools is more like excrement. BTW, after he discovered how bad the "program" is here, people started admitting to how bad schools are in general around here, which is not the song they'd been singing. Anyway. My grandson is neuro-atypical - not the full on rainman thing, just atypical. Nonetheless he needs a supportive environment until his outward development catches up to his inward development. He's been in a VERY good and supportive program but he is going to age out next school year. Not sure why, but public schools here want 4 year olds in their program - preK. And their program for neuro-atypical kids is le suckage. Which my son and DIL didn't find out until they went to some kind of meeting to prepare for the switch. So between threats to my DIL's health (she had a problematic pregnancy and is in her late 30s) and imminent threats to my grandson's development, we're moving OUT of Texhell. Not to mention the whole racism situation. Because of all this my son quit his tenured teaching position which he loved to get a remote job with a large tech firm (just started a couple of weeks ago) so he could move wherever in the country he felt he could get decent services for my grandson, and where my DILs life won't be endangered by restrictions on her access to necessary health care. Before all this stuff blew up in our faces, my son was SURE we would live here FOREVER. So he assured me I should go ahead and buy the kiln and then - KABLOOEY. It seemed silly to spend a ton of money to make the electrical changes to a house I wasn't going to be in that much longer, and then not be able to move the kiln, it was apparently too late to stop the kiln being completed and shipped, my son didn't want to mess with moving it, I was getting advice not to TRY to move it (from Tejas to somewhere around Albany) - it turned into a huge hassle and finally it ended up at the local studio - where it has not even been hooked up yet and likely won't be for a significant length of time (they have electrical issues apparently courtesy of the former studio manager dating back to the opening of the studio - shortcuts taken that shouldn't have been taken). So it all seems sort of a waste. And depressing. Took me awhile to "get over it", not helped by an onslaught of dental issues all at once, 3 root canals, and a history of me having a lot of dental work in the past (40 years, including 2 wisdom tooth extractions) with little or no anesthesia because my nerves are in a weird place and dentists act like Torquemada when you tell them you're not numb. Lots of stress on top of the physical aspects, and a worsening of my Addison's disease consequential to all the stress. So I'm just now back in the studio. Sorry. I don't know how to be concise any more. *sigh*

@neilestrick I counted today. There are exactly THREE of these strips of filmy plastic, two of which are the size of a neck scarf and one of which is a double width neck scarf LOL! Now I have no idea where he even came up with the wherewithal for even making the comment to start with. If it weren't for the donated grocery bags he was dissing, we wouldn't have ANYTHING to cover our stuff with LOL!

Wear a good mask just as you would for mixing glaze. Or at least should LOL!

@irenepots Yeah I tape over holes with cheap packing tape from Harbor Freight LOL! I figure the more use we get out of the plastic crap that's already here before it ends up as microscopic particles in our brain, the better. I have stopped using Teflon tape to improve the seal on bottles and things though. I don't know how eco that actually is, given that means I then turn around and buy more expensive plastic squirt bottles that don't leak. I've found mustard bottles with squirt thingies work great without leaking for liquids. I just don't eat that much mustard.

So after the huge disappointment of having to literally give away a $6500 brand new kiln I'd been waiting for for 40 years, and a round of multiple root canals due to a broken filling and two broken crowns, I'm finally back in the (shared public) studio. Some of you may remember that studio is under new management which brought along with it a change in the quality of the clay. Well its been at least a year now and I'm pretty sure the clay is as it is going to be by now. The stoneware is now extremely wet and soft - there does not appear to be any interest on the part of management to rectify that. And they've stopped pugging and de-airing the B-mix altogether. That means that has to be wedged before you can use it. Which is (obviously) fine for the strong healthy young man now running the studio, but not so great for a broken down old lady with 2 bad shoulders, a bad elbow, and a bad back. (I'm working on the back but there's not much to be done about shoulders ripped up due to hauling my 185lb father up the stairs to the house we rented because the landlord wouldn't let me build a ramp). I struggle with the stoneware. Turns out I can use the B-mix more easily than the stoneware, but then I have to wedge it. I messed up my shoulders again this past summer trying to work with that stash of red clay I got from the studio, but I have to give it a try. I can't stand at a wedging table long enough to actually wedge to completion so I've been partially wedging and then finishing on the wheel (cone UP, cone Down, x3). It hasn't been trouble free yet but I've only given it one day so far. I had some trouble stack 'n slamming because there isn't an installed cutting wire and I was cutting horizontally instead of perpendicular to the table but now that I realize what I was doing wrong (ended up with flat rectangles instead of a squarish block I could easily turn into cones ready for the wheel) I think I can "fix" that enough so that I don't end up re-introducing air when I shape it for the wheel. I'll be going in a little later today to see how it goes. I've switched to the B-mix because the stoneware has been frustratingly difficult for me. I can't get the walls up evenly and end up with a lot of collapsed/twisted stuff. Weirdly, because I always thought B-mix was closer to porcelain, I have a much easier time with it. Its firmer and easier for me to work with, but it also absorbs water like a sponge. I'm a pretty dry thrower but it drinks water. I'm thinking that if I scrape the surface each time I cone up then down I would be introducing less water into the clay (I go up and down 3 times to wheel wedge) so I have a little more time to work it. The stuff I've turned out does look a LOT better than what I could manage with the very wet stoneware, but I don't feel like I have enough control yet. Should I be treating this more like porcelain and scrape it more often? Any tips would be most appreciated.

I just want to add, if its not been said already, that its not just drying fast you should be concerned with. More, drying EVENLY. Its worth it to take an extra day or two for something to dry to make sure it dries evenly. Hardiebacker ware boards help me a lot with that - I can wet them down to slow drying down or leave them dry when that's not necessary. I like to spritz the hardiebacker ware boards a little even so, so it doesn't immediately suck all the moisture out of my base. I still use bags when drying so I can control the drying process. Yes it slows it down - but it guarantees that I don't get something drying too fast or on one side faster than the other. I'm working in a studio in dry Tejas that has fans going all the time in the room where things sit to dry. NOT covering something that is nearly leather hard is a great way to mess your stuff up at the very last minute. One way to handle the impatience is to simply work on something else all the time, so you have a continuous stream of stuff that is drying and stuff that is new and stuff that is ready to move to the greenware area awaiting the next kiln load.

Hey, that's a great idea! If I want a wet box I can dampen my hardiebacker ware board and partially wrap with plastic, set my piece or pieces on it, and cover them with an upside down tote! If I want a dry box, dispense with the dampening and the plastic! Great! No heavy damp/dry boxes to tote around! I've got a big roll of heavy duty clear plastic that I'll be using to solarize my new garden beds wherever we end up. I can just recycle that.

@Gonepotty - You can get it at any big box store: Home Depot HardieBacker 1/4" = 1/4" for real Home Depot HardieBacker 1/2" = 0.42" You score and snap it with this tool unless you are crazy like me, have a big drill, and use the hardiebacker all the time, then you use THESE shears which you run off your big powerful drill that you already have. The version with its own motor is over $200. I've been using 1/2" for everything because that's what I have but I'll be switching to 1/4" for everything but the worktable-wedging table and/or reclaim. I don't have a ware board longer than 2' because I simply can't carry a ware board longer than that full of ware. Not sure I SHOULD be carrying one that long, time will tell. And I'll use it for my shelf liner. 1/4" is plenty for that. This stuff never warps, I've never seen it mold, it dries fast, it helps what's on it dry properly. I have lots of individual piece sized "ware boards" and if I want something to dry slower, I just dip the Hardiebacker in a bucket of water, put a piece of newspaper on it, and set the piece on that and cover it. It provides moisture at an even pace while its wrapped - not too fast, not too slow. Adjust for local humidity by how you wrap your piece. I've used it in humid NC and here in dry Tejas. Love the stuff. Especially for a worktop. NO CANVAS! If I have some sloppy stuff I want to work up I can slam it onto the hardiebacker and the slop doesn't get all stuck onto the canvas. The hardiebacker will pull excess moisture out and I can work it up lickety-split. If the board is a little dry a quick spritz with a spray bottle will give me a good worksurface. Its just way more flexible than canvas or plaster, and longer lived.

Marks? I've never had a single mark on any of my work. I don't make big stuff mind you - everything I've ever made so far will fit in one or two bags or a larger shopping bag, say from Target. When I do start making bigger stuff I'll just use trash bags. I NEVER do dry cleaning (better for the environment). Even at the studio they don't have a lot of this stuff - if any of us were actually using it it'd be gone already. The stoneware here is still uber soft. I have more trouble working the stoneware than I do the B-mix. I've switched to B-mix because it is actually easier for me to work than the stoneware is. It's REALLY soft - and WET. But I have no trouble getting it in the bag without damaging it. Maybe covering soft clay in grocery bags is my secret super power! It would figure I have a stupid secret super power LOL! After the move I'll just have damp boxes - which will also require plastic in the form of a big box and lid. Ya can't win! Or wait - an old defunct fridge! If I can find one and if I can move it by myself. This stuff in the studio isn't dry cleaner bags - its torn up sheets from dry cleaner wraps. You have to wrap it around your work like a scarf. *I* can't do it without it touching the work AND leaving gaps. He THOUGHT he could do it (and it did look better than my efforts) but still it dried out overnight. I'd say the stuff is about 8" wide at most. Really. Like a scarf. I also happen to think that making fun of people who donate bags for this purpose was uncalled for, but whatever.

For years I've just used grocery bags and the like to "wrap" anything I don't want to dry right away. Even if there's a hole in the bottom this has always worked pretty well for me. It works even better now that I have little individual hardiebacker ware boards for my pieces - if I want something to dry slowly, I dip the hardiebacker ware board in water then a piece of newspaper then the piece on top of that. Keeps them form sorta sticking to the hardiebacker when its wet. When I have an uber thin top and a thick bottom (I like to carve a foot) it helps keep them drying slowly until they catch up to each other. I also hang a microfiber cloth over the top (the kind with no loops, like you clean your glasses with). But any "normal" piece has always done just fine wrapped in one or two grocery bags of the plastic persuasion. The new guy at the studio was making fun of those of us who have been donating grocery bags to the studio for years. He insists that the lightweight filmy dry cleaner type wrap stuff is far superior to plastic retail bags. He wrapped some of my pieces in that stuff and lo and behold, both pieces dried out faster than the stuff I wrapped myself in regular ol' grocery bags. And one was drying very unevenly even though I'd wet the hardiebacker it was sitting on. Even the hardiebacker dried out overnight. It's winter here in East Texas. It is super dry. Is he thinking of some other kind of plastic wrap? Has anybody out there ever had a problem using plastic grocery bags to wrap pieces? Am I just delusional thinking they've been fine for my stuff all these years?

I use 1/2" hardiebacker board for reclaim. So far I use the same board for wedging and reclaim because its the only one I have. I was intending to build a worktable to go with my new kiln but that all blew up last summer when it turned out we were going to be moving again. *sigh* The kiln now resides at a local pottery studio. It was apparently too late for me to cancel the order. Anyway. I intended to try a double layer of the hardiebacker but since I didn't build the studio I didn't build the work table, but the single layer laid on my tile floor seems to work just fine for the little bit of reclaim I've been doing lately. You can tip the board up on its side and it dries out super duper fast. Unless you let it freeze/thaw repeatedly when wet it should last forever. Can't say if doubling the thickness would have made any real difference. NOT DUROCK. Hardiebacker board. I use it for ware boards too.

Well registration for Sue McCleod's class opens tomorrow so ... I'm on it.

I love that guy! I was saddened to discover he had died before I ever found that resource online.

@Callie Beller Diesel They're actually the same cost (virtually) - $400 for the Katz class, $397 for Sue McCloud's. Also Sue recommends taking a class specifically about mixing glazes first for an additional $127. I'm pretty sure past experience making solutions for med labs puts me ahead on that score (and perhaps my experience as a fairly serious baker, to a lesser extent maybe, but still ...) As far as I can tell the only difference between the $400 and $600 Katz classes is biweekly zooms where that seems to be built into Sue's class so ... maybe not QUITE identical on that point. I'm not setting up as a production potter but I do plan on involving myself in some fairly esoteric experimentation once the move is over. It always seems like I'll be next year in the holy land. Sure hoping this is the LAST move. I'm angling for a volunteer situation at the studio here and when I last talked to the studio manager about it he mentioned wanting help in the glaze room so ... could mesh well with a class as a "lab" experience.

Sue McCloud: https://suemcleodceramics.com/theartofglazechemistry/ Or Matt Katz: https://www.ceramicmaterialsworkshop.com/our-comprehensive-glaze-class.html Decisions, decisions ... I doubt anybody's taken both but maybe folks who have taken either course can talk about their experience? Thanks

I can't have it delivered elsewhere, I don't know where that will be. It will most likely not happen until next summer - my son is an academic and that's when job changes would go through for the current hiring year, which is not quite underway yet. We are definitely moving and we are definitely moving very very far. Probably northeast seaboard. This really hit me out of the blue. My son has repeatedly insisted a move was not possible. Then Tejas politicians went crazier than usual. I told him this was going to happen. He never believes me. *sigh* This is the worst timing. I mean really. I'm terrified of losing my entire brand new kiln because of having to move it. I never ever would have bought it had I thought there was a chance we'd be moving again so soon.

Well the world moves faster than it seems I can keep up with. My longed-for kiln (which is quite large) is on its way - and we will be moving out of state as soon as humanly possible. Now the expense to wire it in seems wasteful, and indeed even the purchase of the kiln itself would have been put off had I suspected an imminent move. I've considered just not uncrating it but what might that mean for the warranty? Any ideas for what to do now would be really helpful. I'm a bit depressed over all this. I just got this house pretty much the way I wanted it. It all seems a waste now.