Magnolia Mud Research

Who needs 5 tools?! I need a wheel to throw and some water; to hand build I need a flat surface and a stick. use the equipment you have at hand; and make stuff. pots were made long before throwing wheels were invented. First day in class we were handed a lump of clay about the size of a softball and given 10 minutes to make something from the clay. easy to make a cup. LT

Yes & Yes! trimming is not limited to wheel ware. much of my ware is "trimmed" with a sharp spoon. LT

For more than 20 years, IrfanView has been a very useful tool for me for quick rotation, cropping, changing total size, adding text, and some other tools. Not an Adobe Photoshop tool, and not for non-Microsoft hardware. cost is your time to download. https://www.irfanview.com/ LT

ik ook. LT

Corn Huskers Lotion. No oil! no smell! LT

https://glazy.org/materials/15096 LT

Pres: Sodium (oxide) does effect the color on the clay bodies I use; therefore I consider the sodium based material to be a "colorant". applied as an aqueous mist sprayed on bisque ware will, as a minimum, change the "value" of the color of the sprayed regions, and as a maximum, will produce the orange color common to salt/soda firing. Greatest effect is on stoneware that has some iron tinges when fired. sodium borates and phosphates also are "value" changers. I am more interested in contrasts between areas than producing a specific "spot" between infra red and ultra-violet in the visible light spectrum. oldlady: Many of the ingredients that we use are carbonates (and/or other metallic based materials); the carbonates are thermally decomposed to "oxides" during the firings. Water is a (di)hydrogen oxide. Hydrogen carbonate is carbon dioxide dissolved in water. other examples: Sodium carbonate (soda ash) is the material produced by the reaction of sodium oxide and carbon dioxide; calcium carbonate (whiting) is the material produced by the reaction of calcium oxide and carbon dioxide, ... and so on for other metal carbonates. Each carbonate material will decompose to the metal oxide and carbon dioxide at its own specific temperature range. Hydrogen carbonate decomposes at below room temperature while other carbonates (sodium, calcium, cobalt, copper, ...) will need temperatures around and/or above cone 022 (~600 C). LT (Ik ben chemisch ingenieur)

Sodium; soda ash/baking soda actually! LT

Yes. the college studio standard clear (and the base glaze for ~ four other glazes) cone 10 reduction glaze has 2-5% zinc and there is no evidence that the zinc evaporates. my memory says that some reduction crystalline glazes also have lots of zinc but i don't have the recipes. question: Has anyone set down and calculated zinc oxide decomposition to zinc vapor in a combustion kiln environment for the various oxygen levels at various kiln temperatures that the glaze mixture will see? All the data should be available in the CRC handbook or the NIST database. LT

My initiation to ceramics I: the semester started with specific cone 04 Earthenware with a choice of white or red; fired to cone 3 in an oxidation gas kiln producing fully matured ware. at mid-semester the clay body was changed to a specific cone 10 stoneware with a choice of white, tan to dark to be fired a cone 10 in reduction kiln. Ceramics II was again cone 3 (earthenware) firing first half and cone 10 (stoneware) second half. (several years later all classes was cone 10 stoneware reduction). Some where along between earthenware to cone 10 was a semester or two it was all cone 5 (midware) fired in reduction. Today the studio is all stoneware at cone 10-ll reduction. I now use cone 10 clay bodies (because that is the way the kiln is fired) -- any kind -- for structural purposes of an object and use a clay of any cone -- earthenware to wild clay bodies -- as exterior coatings supported by any available high fire rated clay body. Some of my ware uses a cone 04 clay body as a glaze. This works for me. After determining the properties of the "earthenware" clay bodies fired at cone 10, I am comfortable with the way I am using the low fire clay bodies fired in the kiln I use and the way my ware is fired. I am making ceramic art even though the forms are often based on bowls and platters. The clay bodies are mature, the exterior surfaces are glazed with safe glazes. Firing low fire to a higher fired temperature is not normal, but then "ik ben niet normaal!". The cone 3 firing of earthenware was an easy way to make matured ware with bright simple studio glazes. If I were in the business of making drinking and eating ware with a bright strong color palette, cone 3 oxidation of earthenware clay bodies would be high on a choice list; but then I would not be making art, I would be making drinking and eating objects. I am making "interesting objects" with clay ceramics. Over the last five years and so, I have chosen to use any clay body easily available to me, and I make objects that I consider to be "interesting"; I use the term "container" for items that might be considered to be "mug" or some other use; the functionality decision is controlled by the user of the object not by the maker. Each batch of clay is different, and this reduces the boring tendency of making the same form over and over with the same appearance. The leftover low fire clay bodies from my early semesters was available, and I was given the latitude to experiment and to learn something. Improvise, Adapt, Overcome is the driving force for what I make and how I do it. Min, I suggest you take the available low fire commercial clay bodies and find the firing cone that will vitrify to the point that it won't leak without glaze. use that clay body to make your ware, take low fire glazes and fire them to that temperature. Start with firing low fire glazes at the mature temperature for the low fire clay. LT

Once upon a time, I had the same situation, how to reclaim clay and then dry the clay back to throwing moisture. I used a set of large red clay flower pot plates, or a large flower pot sitting on a flower pot plate. These remove water just like plaster, are not as heavy, and are cheap. And no, the red did not contaminate the white (aka porcelain) reclaim. LT

Or L&L could just publish a pdf document on their website with "corrections". This is what the Oxford (and others majors) textbook press does. errors are encouraged to be sent to the editors of the books. The feedback is evidence that readers actually read and use the info in the books! LT

1. when throwing on the wheel, use a tarpaper, canvas, or paper bat. ( https://www.vincepitelka.com/handoutsinformation/ and http://www.vincepitelka.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Throwing-on-Canvas-Bats-as-an-Alternative-to-Rigid-Bats.pdf ). run the cutting wire under the bat, use the edge of the bat to slide the bat and clay form from the wheel onto a ware board; peal the canvas bat off at leather hard stage. 2. for plastic bats: I let the pot dry until it is ready for trimming and trim as much as possible with the pot stuck to the bat, then let the pot dry until pops loose from the bat, then finish trimming the foot; or cut the pot off with the wire tool and the wheel turning slow. 3. remove as much extraneous clay from the pot as feasible (within the limits of the wet clay strength) while still wet and on the wheel; the pot dries quicker, and makes trimming easier. LT

The "test slabs" are interesting forms and prints. well done!!! LT

A well designed one!

Don't build a wall, build a solid fence around it with a gate.

If the clay body requires any combustion, logic seems to prefer having separate incoming and outgoing openings for the gases. At least that’s what my physics and engineering schools recommended.

I use epk out of the bag and alumina-hydrate, equal amounts by volume (use a cup); fire cone 10R.

One answer to the "Thrown Sphere" problem is to first know how much clay is needed to make "the sphere", or to know how big will be "the sphere" for the known amount of clay being used. (gotta do some math here: get the volume of the sphere outside diameter and subtract the diameter of the inside sphere of air to find the minimum amount of clay needed. add about 1/3 more for trimming, etc). make a thick wall cylinder and expand the in the middle. rib the bottom of the cylinder to the shape of the inside. The top 3/4-th of the sphere is thrown directly from a cylinder using the skills of throwing the shoulder and spout of a bottle; close the bottle into a sphere; you now have a closed form of the top 3/4-th done. Let the form stiffen for a while; then trim the bottom 1/4-th to complete the sphere. [Practice by making hollow thrown doughnuts.] Or take the approach I did in a class assignment for making a "thrown sphere": Take a 4x4x4 inch cube of wet clay; shape the cube into a smooth sphere; throw the sphere up in the air and let it fall onto a sheet of paper the floor (or on to your work table if you don't like to bend over); carefully lift the piece from the floor (table) add some decorative slip, dry, remove the paper, fire, and present on a pedestal with the title "Thrown Sphere". Others in the class made two half sphere bowls that were joined one over the other. Seriously (and more on-topic) one must recognize that most thrown forms are monotonous unless we deliberately switch from being a throwing machine and use our artistic skills to produce something interesting. I have colleagues that uses simple plain thrown bottles and bowls as canvases for painting with slips and glazes. I use simple thrown forms with applied "dry slips" to produce random tactility textured canvases for a ground for "painting" with a glaze. The thrown form becomes an three dimensional canvas for making interesting marks. Look at the work by Tony Clennell ( http://smokieclennell.blogspot.com/ ) over the last five years. His forms are simple bowls, cylinders, platters, etc. are canvases to be used to apply handles, feet, and glaze. Or the work by Antonette Badenhorst: https://www.porcelainbyantoinette.com/ or https://www.aic-iac.org/en/member/antoinette-badenhorst/ the forms are simple bowls and cylinders. Look at the work of Voulkous, Paul Soldner, Marcia Selsor, etc. -- the thrown forms are just their starting point. But they were/are past the making bowls for food service; they were/are making art objects not bowls. . i quit making "bowls" when the family said we've got enough "bowls"!!!!; switched to making "interesting 3-d stuff" out of clay -- some of which can be used as a food container (or napkin compressor, or sling-shot target, or ...); the owner chooses how to use it. try making square bird-houses with slanted roofs using thrown lidded cylinders. LT

years ago on clayart David Hendley wrote about his jars with ceramic screw-on lids aka “Homemade Dies”. Look it up on his website: http://farmpots.com/ not as hard (or easy) to do as one might think. LT

Bill, good work! what are the units in the reduction measurement vs time plot? Is the temperature measurement at the same location as the oxygen measurement? Do you convert the oxygen probe reading to oxygen fugacity ( which is the variable normally used in the thermodyamic approach to the chemistry of oxygen in silicate melts)? LT

I wonder if the apparent 'bleeding' is a technique used at the time the blue colorant was applied to the pieces - that was the way I achieved similar effect on canvas with water color and pastel crayons. after lots of practice a "light" stroke with the "right" brush would produce the allusion of bleeding. LT

Try making 8 lbs. lidded Jars for the farmers.

The wax is just an adhesive to hold the alumina in place. The wax burns away. LT

put six-by-twos under the seat, or use the phone book on the seat, that solved the problem of the low level chair at the dinner table when I was a kid. LT