Kelly in AK

A decade ago I carved a half dozen stamps with my initials in leather hard clay. Smooth, fine grained clay. After bisque I tested them and kept the best one. Still using it.

I have to agree with @Rae Reich here. I have seen some very metallic glazes, but they tend to be more bronze-ish. Never seen anything look so gold except gold luster. Perhaps Spectrum 151 glaze, it’s metallic but it won’t be bright gold like your sample.

My studio is the garage of my house, heated by regular garage heater (a radiator with a fan). I keep it around 50° when not working and crank it up when I’m there. Heats up fast. The humidity is really low here in the winter, if I leave the heat on things dry very quickly (sometimes that’s a strategy). I put in a shop sink a few years ago and that’s been wonderful, I don’t have to trudge back into the house for a bucket of warm water. I think the biggest change in winter is some things become so impractical I can’t do them. I can’t run a hose outdoors, so anything requiring a big wash down is out. Mixing new clay waits till summer. The studio doesn’t get a proper cleaning until I can raise the garage door, then I flood the floor and squeegee out the water. I don’t even like to vacuum without the garage door up. Mixing batches of glaze is easier in summer too, that’s preferred. If it’s colder than 20° F firing the gas kiln is out (I have some tricks for emergencies, but it’s way too much work to do regularly). And then there’s the snow. It’s my never ending opportunity for exercise.

The glass etching paste is a brilliant idea. As @Hyn Pattysays, test first. I agree, beautiful work.

The real problem.

I would suggest you re-fire the work as you normally do. At school students use both low fire and cone 6 glazes, sometimes a cone 6 piece ends up in a low fire glaze load. I just re-fire them to cone 6 and haven’t had any problems with that.

I agree with Bill, the best thing I can think of is an epoxy putty. It’s moldable, paintable, and easily available, pretty tough stuff.

On a side note, that is exactly what my regular kiln shelves did after several soda firings, on the unwashed side (bottom). Posts too. Big flakes peeling off. I switched to silicon carbide shelves for soda. My understanding is that the surface layer ends up with a different coefficient of expansion than the shelf and eventually spalls. Obviously soda super accelerates the process, but it looks the same. Oh, and do as Mark says, make your own kiln wash. It’s simple and you’ll know what’s in it.

Agree with @glazenerd, wood ash is caustic. Also agree with above comments about kyanite. You’re after a fine mesh non plastic to inhibit shrinkage cracks, but testing the clay without additions is a good place to start. Too much non plastic material can lead to “splitting” cracks, which are a different beast that happen while your making your work. https://digitalfire.com/glossary/splitting

No silica! I had the good fortune of getting a large amount of zircopax cheap, more than I could ever imagine using for glazes. I used a mix of 40% kaolin and 60% zircopax in my soda kiln (built from a hodgepodge of old electric kiln bricks). It certainly extended the life of the bricks, places that weren’t coated deteriorated faster. It fired hard, sturdy. Alas, there is no coating that will last indefinitely. In my case bricks from different kilns were mixed and some spalled sooner than others. That kiln had somewhere around 30 cone 6 soda firings before large chunks of the wall began peeling off. Soft bricks all spall eventually in soda. I rebuilt it this summer with new k-26 brick, used the same coating, dipping each brick before laying it. The places that get hit heavy are made from hard brick, and I have kiln shelves lining parts of the walls too. As Mark mentioned, it’s best to wet the bricks before applying. You’ll get a much better coating.

Wow! Look at that. Glazed vitreous ware at cone 03. I’m not seeing any obvious glaze defects, looks like your “low” bisque temperature isn’t causing problems. Cool!!!

I’ll confess I’m out of my league with the vagaries of electric kilns, I just expect them to work. Like my phone. Still, I’ll offer my thoughts in case it helps. I’ve had thermocouples that were very corroded and worked fine. A “newish” one is probably not the culprit, provided you have the right type for your controller and firing range. As alluded to above, the wiring would be my first suspect. Presently I have two thermocouples in my gas kiln going to one pyrometer (they have no say in the firing, just provide information). I’ve seen the slightest wiggle of the wires produce wild results on the pyrometer.

I second what @Minsays, I use valve grinding compound (which is just SiC in some kind of goop, seems like glycerin) for lids and it works great. I also see bubbly lava glazes use SiC for the effect. Maybe it could be useful in that way too.

Question of the week.

Thank you @Minand @neilestrick. My last show I had no helper to pack up and, to my chagrin, was last to leave. The first lesson was to never underestimate the value of a helping hand. The next was I could do this part better, so ought to look into it. Voila! Packing before the show is different, you have time. Unpacking and setup is not bad if you’re organized beforehand. Packing to leave…I figured it would go much faster. I looked around and everyone was gone! The security guard was like, “I get to leave when you do.” Anyway, I appreciate the thread and what people have shared here. It helps. Thanks.

I’m borax curious too, about a couple things. One is anhydrous borax, it’s borax fired to glass then reground. The other is using borax in a soda/salt firing. US Borax has a fact sheet on it but I’ve never seen anyone do it. https://www.borax.com/BoraxCorp/media/Borax-Main/Resources/Technical-Bulletin/borates-salt-glazing.pdf?ext=.pdf

If your work is small I suppose it may heat evenly enough to work. It doesn’t look so different than a very tiny raku kiln. Without getting into specifics, if it gets to glowing bright orange hot it’ll melt glaze.

Strongly second this advice.

Very little. It will pass. The fact that Marcia Selsor just posted something inspires the hell out of me though. Go figure.

Gorgeous. I cannot tell you how much this warms my heart. Thank you. At school in the electric kiln a touch of copper and a trace of 6600 does the job. In my home studio, cone 6 reduction soda, your work on glazes helped launch me on an odyssey of believing it was possible. Just a bit of iron, 2%. I’ve come a long way since. Thank you. I’m not alone in saying this: Like it or not, you’re a rock star. (Sorry if this is off topic!)

Mold is a fungus. Bacteria and viruses are different. Chemical sensitivities and acquired allergies are their own domains of human ailments. Beyond infection, bacteria and fungi can also produce chemicals that are harmful and poison us. That said, they’re all at play all the time. Clay is a wet, sloppy, beautiful medium for nasty things to grow in. It sounds like a wonder anyone lives through it. Most people (and I mean the vast majority of people through human history) are not adversely affected by clay. Just like we’re not affected by the dust we breathe, the crap on our fingers when we eat French fries, the dirt between our toes, or the water we drink. This may not be welcome news to the worried, but if clay was going to hurt you you’d be long dead by now. My view is that it’s less about any particular fungus, chemical, or bacteria and more about what you and your physiology will bear. Exposure beyond what our bodies can tolerate, of any pathogen, leads to illness. That’s a dynamic factor. People do die of fungal infections that come from molds we’re all exposed to constantly. People can develop life threatening sensitivities to substances that are fairly common. The fact that you’re alive is a testament to your body’s ability to mitigate all the factors that could destroy it. Your conscious awareness is an inextricable part of the process (“You” and “your body” are the same thing). If the water in the bucket stinks, throw it out for goodness sake! If something makes you sick you ought to stop doing it.

I like slump molds because clay shrinks away from them and I don’t have to babysit to prevent cracks. I’ll confess I’ve forgotten about pieces in a mold and when I finally got to them they were totally fine, just dry. On the other hand, putting a foot on pieces is easier with a hump mold. I do some plates and trays using slump molds and simply don’t bother adding a foot. I usually lay the slab into the mold and use a pounce bag to really get it set into place. That’s not great if you have an elaborate texture you’re trying to preserve. I add texture after the slab is in the mold (which has it’s own set of tricks).

What kept me from answering right away is captured in the comments just above. I know lots of clay artists and they’re all so different. Some are finicky, some are sloppy. Some are mystics, others very down to earth. I couldn’t see a pattern, but felt like there was one. Suddenly it looks obvious. Clay seduces people. I’ve sat in on many of these discussions: “Is clay art? Is pottery art? If you’re doing sculpture, why does it have to be clay?” The clay people, for one reason or many, just love clay. Deeply. They’ll reason, rationalize, make excuses, but it’s in their heart somehow. Why else would you put up with this stuff? Those who do not share this love affair (or are not afflicted with this disorder) cannot quite understand. For the most part, we’re well aware that it seems irrational. If not, sooner or later, we eventually see, and yet continue. It appears irrational only to those who don’t know. For a few years I took up painting. Modesty does not permit me to say how good I was, but if money tells then I was a better painter than potter. Paintings are flat, they store well. All the trappings, even of the best quality, are pennies compared to the dollars and sweat that goes into making pots. Still, clay pulled me back. Nothing compares to it. I would say yes, it’s a certain mentality or emotional state. You can’t keep your hands off of it.

This is how I do it. I add the soda ash solution to slip that’s thick like yogurt or pudding and stop when it’s fluid like cream. Adding too much will make it get thicker again. As Callie said, washing soda is often soda ash with other additives/detergents in it so be careful of that one.

I see you’re in Brooklyn. Philadelphia was where I learned how mold grows in crazed glazes on earthenware. When I say learned I mean saw. My dishes. If it’s porous and holds moisture it will mold. Of course mold needs something to eat, maybe your boards are particularly tasty. Clean the boards with HOT water, put them in a place with good ventilation stacked separately so all sides can dry. If it were me I’d douse them liberally with hydrogen peroxide. Bleach is a nuclear option, but it’s harsh and it stinks. “Dry” means dry through and through, not just the surface. Cycle through boards so they have a chance to dry out. I use Hardiebacker cement board for ware boards. Stays flat, haven’t had any problems with mold.