Min

@High Bridge Pottery, isn’t Stoke-on-Trent where you are working?

It’s very seldom that I wedge commercial pugged clay. Drop the bag of clay on all four sides to wake it up then cut off the weights I’m throwing and smack them into a rough ball on the table top and they are good to throw. I cone all the clay I throw. If I’m throwing something large I’ll split the weight up into around 5 lb pieces and cone then center the first piece the smack the second piece onto the first one and repeat.

Local place is about 30 minute drive, it's the only one in the area. Before the land border shut down I would pick up most of the expensive materials either from a shipping drop site just across the border or I would drive the 2 1/2hrs to Seattle and buy materials there. I know exactly what you mean! Sometimes it seems unfair that there is an automotive or hardware store on every corner and yet ceramic supply places are far and few between, but maybe thats a good thing after all! I remember my dad always saying a boat was a hole in the water you throw money into, sometimes it seems a kiln is a fire into which you throw money.

If your budget allows it I'ld have a look at the machines that can both mix and vacuum pug. With the mixer puggers you can dump dry, slurry, powdered, whatever condition of unfired clay into the mixing chamber then grind it all up and add water as needed then re mix and pug. I've got this one, pug diameter is 3 1/4". If you position the pugger at the end of a table you can put a piece of fabric or foam under the end of the extrusion as it starts to come out then let it just feed itself across the table, I haven't found the need for a specialized roller table. edit - It takes me about 2 hours to clean out my Bailey mixer/plugger. If you are going from a red to white clay it would be a bit longer to get it really clean. It’s not a fun job.

I’m calling the wheel a piece of equipment. And the extruder.

When we lived on Haida Gwaii we were spoiled with all the fresh fish and crab we could get. My husband and I would limit out with crab every time we went diving. At the local cannery they used a heavy flat faced tool instead of the nut style cracker. Smack the top edge of the leg sections with it and the shell splits so it’s fairly quick to get all the meat out. Still have the “crab basher” as my kids would call it.

For throwing it would be sponge (piece of firm upholstery foam), Xiem BatMate (to hold the batts down with no pins or clay), metric ruler (instead of callipers), turning tool (instead of wood knife) and ribs. For handbuilding it would be rolling pins, ribs, templates, weights and bendable hair rollers.

Just for fun try alter the G2926B recipe you mentioned in your other thread by replacing the Ferro 3134 frit with your Gillespie Borate and see how close to the original formula you can get by increasing or decreasing amounts. I'ld start with balancing the boron then fluxes then the alumina then silica. It will probably take going back and forth a bit bumping amounts up and down. When the formula is as close as you can get it then retotal the altered recipe to 100. If you aren't sure what each material contributes to the glaze just click on it from the page you linked and it will tell you what it's comprised of. You might not get it an exact formula match but you should get pretty close. Using glaze chem software or not, if you do some reading on what the materials that are used in glazes contribute to the glaze is going to be very helpful. Otherwise it's a bit like diving into the deep end to try and use software without knowing what to alter to increase or decrease a quality of the glaze. Example would be in the above glaze where is the calcium coming from? Main source of sodium and potassium? And so forth. I'ld also strongly suggest just mixing up small test amounts of glazes before full buckets.

I reformulated your recipe using Gillespie Borate. Instead of using a hypothetical analysis for the China clay I used Grolleg for both the reformulated recipe and in the original. Let me know if you use a different kaolin / china clay and I can redo it. I used the chem analysis from Glazy for the original recipe using Calcium Borate frit from the link @Magnolia Mud Research provided above. This looks okay on paper but if you try it please make sure and do a small test batch before using it on actual pots. Linda Bloomfield ^6 Clear with Gillespie Borate - untested No dolomite needed, its getting enough magnesium from the Gillespie. Potash Feldspar 22.2 Silica 24.4 Gillespie Borate 27.1 Grolleg Kaolin 18.2 Whiting 8.1 total 100

@Gonepotty, post the recipe and which frits you can get now. Also, can you get gerstley borate?

I'm definitely and firmly in the modify / tweak / alter or start from scratch camp as far as glazes go. It's a bit like how I cook, recipes are okay but knowing what the ingredients do then tweaking or substituting them to get the results you are looking for is what I prefer to do. I think part of this comes down to a couple things, firstly if you are one of those people who needs to know the why of things and secondly for economic reasons it makes sense for me to formulate and mix my own glazes. I enjoy glaze formulation, to me it's like doing a crossword puzzle, lots of fun.

About 90% of what I make is thrown but for hand building my preferred method of construction is soft slab. I really enjoy getting a piece made to completion in one sitting and not having to come back to it to finish. Soft slab serving dishes for the most part. I went through a spell of mask making years ago (do we all do that at some point?) and some porcelain seashell and driftwood sculptures more recently just for a change of pace for which I made silicone press molds for crab, urchin, mussels etc.

@cp dunbar, our main admin contact, @Jennifer Harnetty is off for a couple weeks but I'll forward your post to @Kaitlynne Flanigan, she might be able to get you on the right track. If not then when @Jennifer Harnetty returns I'll let her know. (I'm afraid this isn't something mods can sort out)

Pottery supply places sometimes have a notice board where you can post used equipment. Pottery Supply House (same company as Euclid) has a webpage of used equipment being sold by private sellers. https://psh.ca/pages/buy-and-sell (probably more places, don’t know) The repair people that pottery supply places refer people to can be another good resource for used equipment or leads.

I heard back from Laguna about the Cim Talc they are now carrying. The chart below is what I was sent, apart from a minuscule bit of alumina and slightly less LOI it's the same as what @Hulk linked to above in his last link. I noticed the data from the chart Laguna sent is from 2016. I did a side by side comparison of Amtalc-C98 (aka amtalc, amtal and the old pioneer talc). I entered Cim Talc from the Laguna info. The Cim Talc does have more SiO2 which I would rebalance in recipes having more than a small amount of talc in them. I picked a random fairly high talc recipe and ran it with both Amtalc-C98 and Cim Talc, shows the silica difference and very minuscule differences in calcium, magnesium and alumina. I would reduce the silica in the Cim Talc recipe to equal the Amtalc formula. The calcium and alumina differences are more than likely insignificant given the analysis from Laguna had both the calcium and alumina oxides at <3 and <1 respectively. I'll pin this thread as I'm sure the "new" talc topic will come up again.

Mother of Pearl. It looks a bit like the inside of an abalone shell but much lighter.

I emailed Rose at Laguna asking about it, she passed my question onto tech so hopefully we'll get confirmation from them that it's the same (or close to) what @Hulk linked from Digitalfire. Depending on how much talc is in the recipe it might need some tweaking of silica and calcium.

Hi Mark, do you have the chem analysis for the new CimTalcs? (I couldn't find it when I did a search)

@Griffox, I'll let admin know.

I’ll send @Jennifer Harnetty a message asking her to look into your issues.

This question is kind of like asking who's your favourite child. Somedays one can be a "problem" child but on other days they can shine. For a glaze colourant /visual texturizer I can't do without I'ld have to choose rutile, but then again not all rutile behaves as well as others so it too can be a problem child. As far as consistency goes cobalt has always done what it's supposed to do.

Honestly, some days my favourite technique would be to get someone else to do it.

@GEP, the Saftey Data Sheet for the speckled clay body you like should indicate if there is manganese in the body.

Hi Susie, I'll forward your post to admin to resolve. Welcome to the forum.

Links have been updated to the 1.91 version of the EuCal. User Guide (updated also) and the EuCal can be read and used by anyone, the link to the 2018 CM article is behind a paywall but everyone can access 3 free articles a month so it's available that way to people without a subscription. All links in the first post in this thread.