liambesaw

That looks like a dream of a studio! And about 3 times bigger than my house! Very cool, I'm jealous as heck

The mold on the lid is actually efflorescence. It happens when kilns get wet. Soluble salts migrate to the surface where the water evaporates, leaving a fuzzy layer of salt and discoloration. It will eventually go away.

Try spraying the mold halves with water first to avoid the gaps. They happen when the plaster sucks out the moisture too fast. Will take longer to cast, but will help eliminate bubbles like that.

Looks like mocha diffusion (sorry I had to)

Cress kilns is still a company, so you can contact them for a manual. But most kilns are pretty much the same thing or a variation of the same. You can look up videos on YouTube about operating a manual, kiln sitter or digital controller depending on which your kiln has, and the directions will usually translate to that kiln. Good luck and welcome!

I'm lucky enough to live 30 minutes from my kiln manufacturer, and lucky enough to have a giant mercury relay, so the only thing I keep on hand is a spare thermocouple.

Another person, who is very generous with knowledge is Jered at Jereds pottery in emeryville, california. He does a ton of restaurant work and has answered all of my questions very thoroughly.

Functional Pottery by Robin Hopper. Very good book if you're interested in functional pottery.

Totally fine, and if you feel the clay where it crawled it usually has a very thin layer of glaze still. At least mine do. Here's a vase where you can see it crawled just under the rim, but it's shiny and smooth still, just not as shiny and smooth as the other places.

I wish mine looked like that!! Its supposed to be an orange, but some of the details got lost when I used an old spray paint stencil I made since the stencil film didn't really stick well to the clay.

Fireproof snow is my favorite kind

Functional Pottery is a specific subset of pottery with a focus on regular use. A flower pot would not be considered functional pottery, even though it serves a function and is pottery. More a gripe with semantics.

I made one with an aquarium pump and a foot pedal too, just haven't used it in a while and I can't remember why

Dip the mug right side up to the rim and flip it over and just touch the rim to the glaze, no burp like dipping upside down

I spent the weekend glazing the rest of my bisqueware I had saved up, finishing bottoms and taking pictures. Going to be listing it all on my online store and having a fun sale sometime in the coming weeks. I have some stuff I know will be popular just from how many people on instagram, facebook and reddit have reached out to try to snipe things early. I participated in my local clay art associations pot swap this year and will be sending out this plate to the person whose name I drew!