Hulk

I used 2 old fashion galvanized hoops with  brass screens for decades with two sticks over a bucket until I bought a Talisman. Now I have three if them hanging -bought two used from other hobbyists who sold out. I have one for white glazes and one for dark and one that just hangs. Many people buy one and find their set up cannot clean them well. The trick is a tall faucet in studio with a rubber or in my case silicone  hose as I can put a 5 gallon bucket in sing or spray out the sieve when done with it. Once you master the plumbing they work fine. in a small sink its to hard to clean them. I have been to NZ to the factory on the north Island in thge 90s and bought spare parts as well. I have about 30 years now in using them and never  looked back. Now the other day I was doing smaller than 1000 grams and used one of the tiny smaller Talisman  from Laguna clay baby sieves .These are made from PVC with stainless screen. I use an 80 mesh for all sieving as well no matter what the sieve.
The Talisman is made for large batches like 5 gallon buckets or larger. I do not consider it a hobby size deal as its to big.

Hi folks, we covered this a few years ago, but I was mixing glazes yesterday with my plastic bucket sieve, and a brush to run the glaze through the sieve into a spare bucket, and then back into the rinsed out original bucket.  I have often wondered about buying a Talisman sieve, but in the long run the cost scares me away, and I really get along fine with my bucket sieve. I will pick up a digital scale as the cost of them has come down.
QotW: Talisman, Bucket or other type of sieve for glaze mixing?
 
bestg,
Pres

I used my one-gallon bucket for tools to/from Wheel I&II classes.
The throwing buckets available in the Ceramics Lab were all two gallon size (and encrusted); I prefer the smaller size, so, double duty.
Full sponge, half sponge, sponge bits, pointer, metal rib, wood rib, wood knife, sandpaper, wire/cutoff, a few brushes, small glaze sieve, tape, scissors, razor knife, and somewhat I'm not remembering, surely.
For other stuff - snacks, glasses, drinks, notebooks, more snacks - I'd repurposed my "tool bag" from last ~fifteen years of work life, somewhat like this, err, exactly like this:
BUCKET BOSS 12 in. Gatemouth Tool Bag with zippered top and 16 Total Pockets 60012 - The Home Depot
...but well worn and faded.

Brilliant answer, exactly what I was looking for.  Thank you
I did have my suspicions that a flux would be needed. I really don't mind spending time experimenting but working with gold has obvious drawbacks. I have allocated a few grams of scrap for this purpose.
I've ordered Greg Daly's book so this will be a good starting point. Hopefully I'll have some positive feedback in the coming weeks.
Sounds like you've been down this particular rabbit hole yourself with success?

I wasn't successful getting the gold to reduce with just pine resin, if you buy Greg Daly's book "lustre", he details making it from elemental sulfur and gold chloride. This works well.  Commercial lustres using pine resin thinned with toluene use a different gold salt, I'm guessing that's the reason they work.  I think the compound is a chlorohexanoic salt of gold. 
You'll also need a bit of bismuth in there to act as a flux bridging the gold and glaze.  
I had some luck making a silver lustre by making silver soap.  Silver decanoate.  But it was difficult to dissolve in almost everything so it was a pain to apply.  Was conductive though and I made a few touch lamps using it.  Also had success doing a similar thing with copper.

Some plausible-looking advice on techniques and H&S referenced in:
Historically there have been two sorts of lustres: reduction lustres and resinate lustres. Your comments seem to apply more to the reduction-fired reduction lustres. While tho commercial oxidation fired products are resinate lustres.
Ever wondered why solder is often sold with a rosin flux running through it? When you apply it to the joint the hot rosin reacts with any oxide on the copper surfaces to form copper resinate.
The resinates lustres are made by reacting metal oxides or salts with rosin and dissolving the resinate in  or another solvent. With luck you finish up with quite a high concentration of metal resinate  in the solvent. When these are fired they decompose leaving a thin metal film (and often some pretty nasty fumes).
As Min said, do try and get in touch with @liambesaw if you can, but he hasn't visited the here since  2022.
A friend used to run a garage industry making resinates and had very strong reservations about many of the solvents used in commercial lustres, sticking to - AFAIK - linseed oil.
Manufacture a gold lustre is fairly briefly covered in "Pottery Decorating" by R. Hainbach.  Which involves mixing "bright gold" with a bismuth lustre. Bright gold apparently containing resinates of gold and rhodium (and also possibly bismuth, uranium, chromium and iron?). Although a simpler wet process is also described for producing gold resinate from gold trichloride and resin-soap.
... probably much better to find out what people do nowadays.
PS The book seems fairly expensive at the moment, change this search to your location and currency.
https://tinyurl.com/2d783cv8
 

Hi guys, I'm new here, I seemed to come across this forum a fair bit when researching things so figured it was about time I signed up, its given me some pretty useful tips over the last year or so. Happy to give back what I take, I have more of a technical history than ceramics but there's plenty of overlap.

Anyways, my first post I'm looking for a bit of guidance on creating my own gold lustre, there is very little information floating around the Internet and any books I've purchased are more geared towards using lustres than making them so I've been fumbling in the dark. Now I know commercial  lustres are available but I have a working project that requires me to make my own to give provenance to the finished piece
Now as far as I can work out a gold lustre is simply either elemental gold in a nano/powder form or gold chloride mixed with a carrier oil, lets say pine oil, would this be a correct assumption? I would then use toluene, turps or similar to thin this to the right consistency? Would I pretty much just mix say 10-15% gold with the oil, then boil to ensure it mixes well? I already have some experience in refining gold and do have the necessary nasty chemicals to produce my own powder or chloride so its really just the last step that im fairly vague on
Thanks for any input, like I said, information on the process seems very patchy, even a pointer to a decent technical book would be appreciated.
 
 

Posting a reply to push this (newly split?) thread to the top of "Topics" and "All Activity" lists...

https://insight-live.com/insight/share.php?z=7WnpT9vC3b

This has some great info on your glaze, as well as multiple revisions meant to solve known issues.

I don't have a good sense of what is causing it. I've mixed hundreds of tests now across many variations on multiple recipes, all produce the green. It isn't Chromium or Copper, neither are in any of the materials I'm using. I can rule out contamination as I first started working on this 7 years ago, but only got it really producing results in the last year. I've been using materials purchased at various points throughout, so the contamination would have to be consistent for years, and also not show up in my production that shares use of these materials.

Distilled water is a great test idea, I'll run that test soon. I would think I'd see the green in my porcelain too though if it was my water, unless something in the water reacts with phosphorus. It is one thing that is constant, and the water here is extremely hard. Maybe trace elements of magnesium? Thanks for suggesting this, it isn't something I was considering. 

I have considered that maybe some weird crystalline silicate of calcium is forming as I cool the kiln. There is so much calcium in the body, and it becomes quite fluid in the kiln, perhaps something green is forming (or blue and then combining with yellow from trace iron/titanium?). I always run a slow cool, but I have some work that doesn't need it. I'll save up enough of that work to run a cone 6 without a slow cool and see if that changes things. Another thought is how trace amounts of iron in reduction give us celadon greens. I'm firing in electric though, but maybe I'm getting some localized reduction? Seems unlikely.

I've come to really like the green, so if it isn't a sign I'm doing something wrong I'm going to keep it. I just really want to know why it shows up. 

Attached is an image comparing my bone china to Laguna's Frost. For those outside North America, Frost is a halloysite porcelain know for burning a nice white (for a NA porcelain). You can really see how the bone china is a cool white, with a distinct green tint even without light being directed through it. As I said before, I find it pleasing. 

Same make of splash pan as your wheel available here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D1K8QWKD?ref_=ast_sto_dp Looks like it has just become available.
Is this the correct size? I’m super impressed you could throw a 12 x 16” lidded pot on one of those small wheels.

Agreed, but with it so thinned out I couldn't get a true specific gravity to plug into the formula - it was too close to 1. Next batch, I'll try not to thin it out too much. Appreciate all the info!

A tool bag that mechanics use might be something to look into.   There are many different sizes and features,  I  have tool box trays in my studio,  you couldn't carry them but they are very handy and inexpensive.    Denice

So I am testing some new liner glazes today to look for one to replace my go to I have used for 40+ years. I opened my glaze book and found one TRJ emailed back in the day from this site, also wishing me a Merry Christmas . For those that do not recall him he was another professional full timer like me from Canada. After a few years of back and forth  emails we were going to meet at an upcoming NCECA but alas he got sick and passed away. His posts live on here just like mine will when I'm gone. He shared info freely as many do on this site. I mixed up his liner cone 10 reduction glaze  today and will test it in coming week. It was good today thinking about a man I never met and what may have been. Now I may be using his liner glaze on a zillon pots if I like it. Thanks  TOM akaTRJ
On that note I did meet another Potter last week at a Crafts Fair in Saint Louis and we did a mug exchange . I was there twofold to visit with my wifes sister who moved 1 hour south of STL  last year. Also we drove south 3 hours to see the eclipse which was fabulous with clear skies our second one in  the past 7 years. It was a joy to meet another potter from this site and share stories and ideas.I had my  coffee in his copper red mug this morning.Its a small planet really.

Didn't see anything in the news a few weeks ago; I'd missed this, "The EPA says the smells near the Reilly Tar & Chemical Co. Superfund site matched benzene, pyridines and ammonia." from Neighbors concerned over years of bad smell prompts action from EPA (wrtv.com)
The article includes a photo of Tibbs Ave/Minnesota St intersection, which is... 105 miles away, perhaps not related.
Best wishes for identifying the problem(s) asap.

Copper is interesting and there are limits but most often found in an industrial setting when testing for heavy metals.. Sounds like you need a real environmental air test and lab analysis to figure this out ……… then figure out the source. Clay may or may not be a concern here so a real test with real quantities of constituents likely is the best way to know with reasonable certainty. For now, no exposure or very limited exposure until you can correct seems important. Adding cleaning chemicals, moisture etc… can amplify effects. I suggest get  a real test and lab analysis ……. on paper by an industrial hygienist or equivalent.

Thank you all for the kind words and support! Been a wonderful adventure so far and am excited to see where the road leads now that I have some bearings! Will keep you all posted on the next firing! 
 

I have a Brent with a large splash pan,  I still get curls of clay on the floor when I trim.  I hung vinyl wallpaper around my wheel because I will splatter clay when throwing.   I actually love seeing the curls,  it means that I am  still able to work in my studio at the age of 71.   To me a part of being a potter is having a mess to clean up.   Today I am cleaning the studio so I can mix up glazes for testing and making a new mess.   Embrace the mess.     Denice

I'm seeing Evenheat model 1210 described thus (where the volts, amps, and watts values line up):
"The RM II 1210 is the ultimate personal ceramic studio design. The RM II 1210 is designed to fire china paints and clay materials up to 1800°F (982°C), cone 07 on a daily basis."
Note, the 2280 value stamped on the depicted plate is labelled "watts"...
...looks like the low fire model there SierraRed18!
The 1210B  Evenheat model, however, is 240v, 3120 watts, rated cone 10, 2350°F ("High Fire")
 

Thank you so much, new friends in this (new to me) community.  I appreciate so much your help and time, and expertise.  In reading various posts yesterday, I learned that cones are basically glaze (glass), so I gently broke off the melted cone.   I'm wiser than yesterday, thanks to my mistakes and all of your shared knowledge.  Next step for me is glazing.   If you don't mind, I'll check in with y'all as I learn.
Again,
thanks for explaining and advising me regarding what happened, and ways to improve my outcomes.
This is a fun adventure for me.   Here's my first haul.   Beads, glazed beads firing rack, wall art slabs, (maybe to be used as stamps on canvas too), glazed pendant firing hangers, and sculptures by grandkids, etc.  Fingers crossed.
LAR in CA 

I use Peggy Heer’s orIgInal Spooze, which is, essentially, 1/3 ea. clay, vinegar & corn syrup. Sorry-too tired to find the recipe, but it's online.  I use this when I want to join or mend something or fill in a crack  on dried greenware. It works great for my purpose. (which is not production/retail/professional). It has never failed! 

I do like water.
A few years ago I tried for a fountain, driven by a small pond pump.
Credit the FDR Memorial (Washington, DC) fountains, in part, for positive inspiration, a neighbor's drop-in pool kit for negative inspiration.
The former, a variety of water sounds, each fountain different, each pleasing; the latter, a solid stream, not so pleasing.
I wanted a soft drip, hence, the water flows over the inverted cone shape, falls a short distance (.8 to 1.2") to the tower base, then another inch or so to the reservoir, producing a gentle gurgling murmur.
The pump is concealed between the base and tower, wrapped in foam to dull the humming.

I do like water.
A few years ago I tried for a fountain, driven by a small pond pump.
Credit the FDR Memorial (Washington, DC) fountains, in part, for positive inspiration, a neighbor's drop-in pool kit for negative inspiration.
The former, a variety of water sounds, each fountain different, each pleasing; the latter, a solid stream, not so pleasing.
I wanted a soft drip, hence, the water flows over the inverted cone shape, falls a short distance (.8 to 1.2") to the tower base, then another inch or so to the reservoir, producing a gentle gurgling murmur.
The pump is concealed between the base and tower, wrapped in foam to dull the humming.

I use the slip from my hands throwing medium and larger forms. I keep in in tall plastic open container with a piece of light plastic over it. If it gets thick we add  a splash of vinegar. Sometimes no vinegar for months.  Thgis slip is always teh same body we are working with and water is not added. I also collect from splash pan if needed quickly, gthge thicker stuff .Never bothered about magic-I learned ceramnics before those concepts where born and never needed them so never thought about doing them later. Now I will add we handle thousands of mugs every year in porcelain and getting the handles on same day is the norm with the clay all the same moisture content. Handles,  on then cover with loose light plastic sheets that night uncover and let dry. If any small cracks appear I use a thin wood stick to rub them out while loading them in bisque kiln. (pro tip I leaned from another potter in the 80s) then they never show up again. Also if you do this while loading that saves handling them another time which is all about time saving which is what am all about with clay.

Oh my gosh you guys! I was not expecting anyone to be responding to my questions because I thought it would easily get lost. Opened the forum today and I'm seeing all of these comments and learning so much from you all. Thank you so much for taking the time and commenting over here. I've been carrying out a lot of my research based off of Instagram and Pinterest looking through works by various artists and how that connects to their audience. It has started to get very interesting. I will be sharing all that I've learned as things progress forward. It is going to take me some time to read through all of the comments and since it is late here in Melbourne and I'm sleepy I can't comprehend everything, haha! But I shall be back here tomorrow! Thank you so much once again! I'm so very happy! Thank youuu!!