liambesaw

Yeah as soon as they are stiff enough to support being flipped over they get flipped over. I did speed dry them outdoors with a fan so I could wire them off and reuse the bats (I only have 36 bats). Worked out pretty good and I only killed 3 of them while trimming heh.

Spent the last few nights editing and rendering the video but it's finally done!

If I did put my keys on it I might stop losing my cutoff wires (and my keys)

Ooo fancy! I have trimmed all but the last 20, which hopefully won't be too hard by the time I get to them tonight.

Ugh I need to hear this, I just have a pile of tools on a sheet of plywood balanced on a 5 gallon bucket of slip

Much like @Callie Beller Diesel, I have a full plate tonight. In celebration of my youtube channel reaching 100 subscribers I decided it was a good idea to throw 100 bowls. Now that they're all drying at a rapid rate, I'm having second thoughts on how great of an idea it was! Haha

How do you dispose of clay? I'm picturing a porcelain mountain next to your studio.

I use the cap from a gallon milk jug when trimming. Just put the bowl upside down on the wheel head and put the milk cap on top and you can push the bowl down with the cap while you trim to steady it. It's real slippery plastic so it acts as a kind of bearing.

You'll need to make sure the wiring and circuit can handle the amperage it's going to draw. You should be able to find a nameplate on it with the specifications of the kiln. After that you should be able to type in "how to fire a manual kiln with kilnsitter" in YouTube and get a bunch of videos showing the process.

Rare earth refining is where you would draw concern I think. I think all the lanthanides are mined together and separated via chemical process. Since China is the dominant (only) producer of rare earth elements I'm sure they do it all safely and ethically. But once again, the pottery world draws almost zero demand, so you aren't the driving force behind the mining and processing of the ore, you're a side concern of a side concern when it comes to praseodymium.

Hey if you ever need me to smuggle you some I've got your back that's a lot of dough (even if it's funny money)

5 lbs for 110 bucks, used to be 50 a pound. Pretty good but I would never use 5lbs, I only have one blue glaze

I don't think potters drive enough of a demand for cobalt to be worried that they're the reason for bad mining practices. I don't know the numbers but I'm going to guess that potters use less than a thousandth of a percent of the cobalt mined. We use cobalt alloys at work and I know they're the metal of choice for prosthetics and implants because they're biocompatible. Of course the electronics industry is the biggest consumer. So as far as feeling guilty, I just can't. Too far removed from the problem and not driving demand. Speaking of which, I guess demand has plumeted because cobalt is cheaper than I've seen in long while. Last time I picked up a pound I was shocked to see it at like a quarter of it's usual price.

Isn't it? A family friend just had her knee replaced. They cut her bad knee out. Cemented a chrome-cobalt knee in, stitched it up and they had her walking stairs 6 hours later. Ridiculous

Just been doing some experimenting since I have plenty of bowls, mugs, spoon rests, etc. I'm thinking about entering our local guilds call for entry, it's the annual teapot show. I had a dream about something like this so am trying to get it right. This is the second prototype and it's getting closer. Also been making taller two part vases, but the problem is my kiln is only 18 inches deep and 23 inches wide so i can't go too big. This vase is 20 inches tall wet, hoping it fits and fires on its side ok.

I'm still trying to save up enough to make a big bottle of gold lustre, will let you know if I've got enough in 20 years hah. It's just for fun

I'm going camping this weekend and plan to bring back a bunch of decomposing bedrock. I do some gold prospecting and so I always have granular magnetite but as I was washing a bunch of bedrock clay down the stream last time I thought hey I bet this would melt in a kiln!

I follow the rabbit holes as I go. If something interests me further I pursue it until it doesn't interest me anymore. So recently my pursuit of DIY lustres came with a lot of research. I figured there had to be a cheaper option out there that I could make myself. There is and there isn't, but I'm still on it and still making them, mainly because I like the way the bright oil-like sheen looks on my pots. It's subtle so I doubt anyone would really notice until I pointed it out, but they're cool! Anyway, I don't mix my own clay for several reasons, the main one being there's very little cost savings and I have local access to beautiful pugged clays for dirt cheap. I do mix my own glazes and make my own tools, but that's out of cost savings and control and not about returning to the roots or honoring my ancestors or whatnot. I like this hobby because you CAN go down these rabbit holes and come out understanding just a weeeee bit more about the different processes and how they interact. But it's also awesome because everything is now set up to where you don't even NEED to know anything so just about anyone can hop on into the hobby with just a few hours of reading.

Yah just this months PMI has an article featuring bleeding underglaze, complete with a clear glaze recipe. But it's cone 04-6.

Good question, though after the cobalt crash it doesn't seem like much of anyone is producing it now. Buy it while it's cheap, China's surplus won't last forever

I have one I've been bringing, no bites yet, maybe people are intimidated by it's largeness

Been making a bunch of these 8lb vases instead of making things that will actually sell. Cant help myself, I just love making them. I made a handful of little lidded jars last night to replenish the ones I sold though, so I still did something.

Well I usually take kiln opening pictures but for some reason this load fired a little hot and I had a lot of pluckers but the shelf of lidded jars was fine. So I was a little demotivated and then I had the farmers market the next day so I just went about getting ready for that and totally spaced the pictures. Oh well!

Did the farmers market again this week, my big seller this time was small lidded jars. I made a bunch last week and sold them all. Forgot to take pictures whoops. Guess I'll go ahead and make a bunch more of those!

Ok ok fine, for the integrity of clay art.