neilestrick

You'll like underglazes then. The color in the jar is the color they'll fire to. When you layer them you'll get some bleed-through of darker colors into lighter colors, but that can add a lot of depth to the surface. They don't mix like paints- yellow and blue will not make green- but you can tweak them pretty easily using colors that are next to each other on the color wheel- blue and green to make blue-green. You can also lighten and darken them with black, white, and gray. It requires testing, though, because the color you mix won't necessarily be the same after firing because some colorants are stronger than others. For instance, blue and black tend to overpower other colors, so what looks good as a 50/50 mix before firing might need a 90/10 mix. This platter is done with Speedball underglazes, fired to cone 6 on porcelain. It looks like Scarva carries Speedball, and underglazes are compatible with most any clay body. The only thing to watch out for is if you're firing to cone 6, some colors may change. Speedball colors all hold very well, but the Royal Blue and Red tend to flux out at cone 6 and get rough. Their other blues and reds do fine. Carmine red is a nice color. Amaco Velevet underglazes are very nice, but more expensive.

I don't know what you have available, but I like Speedball underglazes, and they have a nice clear glaze, too. Amaco makes nice underglazes, too, but I see more color shifting in those when fired to cone 6. Get some small jars of whatever you have available and do some testing.

If you want to paint images like flowers and whatnot, then you want to use underglazes, not glazes. Glazes will generally run/flow where they contact each other, and any imagery you paint on will bleed and move and blur. Glazes do not require a clear glaze over them, and the clear glaze will mix with the other glaze and change how it looks. Underglazes, however, will not bleed where they contact each other, are not fluid, and have the added benefit of being the same color before and after firing so they're easy to work with. Underglazes require a glaze over them in order to be durable and food safe.

S&P shakers typically have a plug at the bottom which will allow you to pour glaze into it and dump it out. Clean out the holes well and you're good to go. If you glaze the outside, it would be good to glaze the inside, too, to prevent cracking from glaze tension.

Note that this body is meant to be fired in reduction. In oxidation it's going to have different properties since the iron will behave differently.

The other concern with leaving them on the ground is if you get a freeze-thaw cycle where the ring has a puddle in it from rain or melted snow and the re-freezes. When building outdoor ceramics you need the proper clay body, but also the proper design. Outdoor sculptures have to be designed in a way that water won't puddle into crevices where it can freeze and expand and break the piece.

So you're going to paint the clay with acrylics? From a durability standpoint, I would go with glaze instead. Shakers get banged together as people move them about. Using underglazes with a clear glaze would be the same process and similar look to acrylics.

For a bisque firing that's good practice. But if they've already survived bisque then they're going to be fine in the glaze. The middle likes to run hotter than the top and bottom in Skutt kilns. Load the bottom looser, or with pieces of low mass like bowls. Put tall stuff at the bottom, too. Load the middle tight, with small pieces and flat pieces that require a lot of shelves. Lot of dense mass there. Load the top similar to the bottom, with lower mass pieces.

No need for a hold in the first segment. Explosions aren't a concern with glazed pots unless you just dipped them and put them directly into the kiln and are firing very fast. Segment 2 is unnecessarily slow for a glaze firing. Get rid of segment 2 and go 350/hr after segment 1. Segment 3 should go up to 1953. Run the last 200 degrees at 108/hr to 2167. Did the preprogrammed setting work in the past? There's no reason it should suddenly stop working unless something is out of whack. Have you checked the condition of the thermocouple? Have you put cones in the kiln to confirm that it's firing accurately?

I'm assuming these will be set into the ground at least an inch or two? I would not leave them in the ground in the winter, as the movement of the soil as it freezes may break them. Even sitting above ground I would watch out for water puddling inside them and then freezing. I'd put them in the garage or shed over winter.

With a commercial glaze it's complicated because you don't know the formula of the gaze. So you can either fire it hotter, or add a little frit to it. 1-2% frit 3134 may be enough to get it to bleed, but you'd have to estimate the amount of glaze material if you're working with a premixed wet glaze and do a lot of testing. By adding frit you'd be voiding any food safety labeling, so you'd need to test it for durability and safety. That little bit of frit shouldn't make much of a difference, though. To make it less fluid you could add equal parts EPK and silica. Zinc free is always a good choice when working with colors.

Do you have access to western glaze materials, or the ability to convert a recipe to materials that you have available? I'd start with a good clear recipe and test stains. A simple cone 04 clear recipe is: 90% Ferro Frit 3124 + 10% Kaolin Firing it a little bit higher will increase the glossiness and flow. You can opacify it with zircopax.

So you're using an indoor kiln? It's pretty easy to overload a vent with smoldering sawdust....

You want to get up to red heat for the carbon trapping to work well. Too hot and it'll just burn out, though. For horsehair firing we always went up to about 1300F, which should work for this, too.

I agree. Make it easy for your customers to give you money. I had a neighbor at a show who refused to take credit cards. She only did 4-5 shows a year so she didn't want to mess with it, and said many times that the 3% fee was highway robbery. All weekend long I saw people asking if she took cards and and then walk away when she said no. She could have sold another $500 of her work for $20 in fees.

My insurance (Hartford) covers my shop/studio, product liability, art fair liability, and my kiln repair work, for $235 a month. A lot of that cost is the kiln repair work, because it's considered high liability since I'm working with things that use a lot of power and get really hot, and could in theory do a lot of damage if I do something wrong. My insurance broker said a lot of insurance companies won't even cover me because of the kiln repair work. They just don't want to take on the liability, even though there's never been a claim on my policy in the 18 years I've been in business (knock on wood).

Lots of possibilities here. Start with seeing if all the elements glow when you put them on high for a bit. If a section isn't working, then you'll have to figure out where the power flow is stopping in the system, either in a wiring connection or a switch. If the bricks are in good condition, then it's generally worth repairing. Chances are it's just one part that is the problem. If it's in an environment where it could get rained on or be subject to dewy mornings, I would definitely not upgrade it to a digital controller unless you do a wall mounted controller and bring it inside when not in use, however that doesn't help any of the issues with the current system because it would all still be in use as well.

I have shows that are 80% CC sales, and other shows that are 80% cash sales. It just depends on the area and clientele. I find that a good percentage of people at art fairs understand that using a CC costs us 3%, and they try to use cash as much as possible. But by early afternoon most people are out of cash and if they really want something they're going to use a card, although they tend to apologize. At least 75% of the money that goes through my business is via credit cards, and always has been.

Yes, Skutt used to be Thomas Stuart. The Prodigy is their budget model, lacking in several features like the large splash pan and reversing. However, if you always throw in reverse, you can just switch the leads on the motor. But I don't think it's worth buying a Skutt without getting the big splash pan. Skutt 1/3hp models can handle what most 1hp wheels can handle. They have a ton of torque, and their motors are much larger in physical size than most wheels. I've got 10 of the 1/3hp models, and I've never bogged them down, even centering 25 pounds and working on 50 pound planters. They have better speed control than Brent wheels IMO, and 6 different controller adjustments to dial in how you want the wheel to feel.

Lt-3K is the model of the Kiln Sitter shutoff device, not the kiln itself. The kiln model should be listed on the serial plate on the side of the kiln. In general, one hour with the switches on low, 1 hour on medium, then high till the Sitter shuts it off. SITTER MANUAL HERE

It's 2022, and no business should be complaining about credit card fees at this point, or adding to the price IMO. Fees have been steady at roughly 3% for years and years, so I don't know why they're suddenly having a fit about it. It's a given at this point that the vast majority of one's customers are going to pay by credit card, so you set your prices with that in mind. If someone pays cash, great, you make any extra 3% on that sale. Nearly every kiln I sell to anyone other than a school is paid for by credit cards, which means up to $200 in credit card fees with each kiln. Any discounts I give take that into consideration. I sold a large kiln last year that had over $500 in credit card fees, so that greatly affected the discounts I could give. It's a cost of doing business in the modern world, no different than the cost of shipping, packing materials, overhead, etc. The better option to encourage cash sales is to raise your prices to cover the credit card fees and then offer a 3% discount for cash. People respond better to rewards than punishments.

Soldner wheels have small motors but lots of power. Something to do with the pedal design. They are very smooth, very nice to throw on. By far the smoothest wheels I've ever used. Pricey, though. I'm a big fan of Skutt wheels. Lots of power in even the 1/3hp wheels, and the big splash pan keeps the studio much, much cleaner than wheels with small pans.

Simply to increase the volume of the kiln. However since it doesn't have elements, it lowers the max temp of the kiln.

1. Turn on the bottom switch, with the lid cracked about an inch or two, for 1 hour. 2. Close the lid. Wait 1 hour. 3. Turn on the second switch up from the bottom, wait 1 hour. 4. Turn on the next switch, wait 1 hour. 5. Turn on the top switch, wait for the cone to bend and the Sitter to shut off. Your Kiln Sitter does not have a backup timer, so I strongly recommend getting a digital pyrometer so you can track the temperature and make sure it doesn't over-fire. Sitters are known to stick occasionally, so always be there to check the pyrometer and make sure it shut off when it was supposed to. Any digital pyrometer with a heavy duty type K thermocouple LIKE THIS will work. Looks like you have a blank ring also? If you add that onto the kiln, the max temp of the kiln will only be about cone 1. Without the blank ring it'll get to cone 8, so suitable for cone 6 work.

I've forgotten half of what I knew about glaze formulation, because I just don't do much of it any more. But when I do need to do some tweaking of a glaze, I use glaze formulation software. I've used Hyperglaze since I started making pots in 1992, and it has worked well for me. Back then it was the only system for Mac users and I never found a good reason to switch to anything else. I first learned to calculate UMF by hand, which I think is a great way to understand what's happening when the software is making those calculations for you, but unless you're pretty comfortable with math it will most likely make things more confusing. A good understanding of the materials is more important IMO. Even if you're not super knowledgable about glaze formulation, the software (whatever brand) is a great way to catalog your glazes in a format that gives you lots of information beyond just the simple recipe. It will also calculate batch sizes, which is a big help for folks who aren't handy with math. I rarely calculate a glaze from scratch. It's just not necessary with all the glaze recipes available on the interwebs, plus I have a database of like 800 recipes that I've built up for the last 30 years. Instead, I find something that's close to what I need and tweak it as necessary. I was trained to work with the UMF, so that's what I do. Most of my tweaks involve substituting ingredients to use what I keep in inventory, and adjusting melt, glossiness, and COE. I think the best way to begin to understand glaze formulation is to first find a good book or online tutorial on the subject that lays it out in simple terms- fluxes, stabilizers, glass formers. When I was in school we did not have such a book, only more technical tomes that were somewhat difficult to understand. But in the last 20 years there have been some great ones that make it easier to understand. From there you just have to jump in and start doing it. Test, test, test. In my 2 1/2 years of grad school I ran about 3,000 test tiles, and that really built on the foundation the books gave me and made me fluent in the glaze language. Glaze formulation has come a long way since I first learned it, and we're much more aware of the benefits of making durable glazes, whereas we used to be far more focused on jsut safety and leaching. I think glaze safety is probably the most difficult thing to learn, but again the newer books address that much better than the old classics.