Bill Kielb

Ok, ended up only throwing 2 keepers last night, but I got my gauge set and will throw some more tonight.  I can only do 3 a night for now because 3 of my bigger bats up and walked off somewhere.  Oh well!  I have a 50lb bag of plaster #1 and some pie tins, I should just start making some.
Anyway, another video if anyone is interested in my process.
 

Nice about these little bats is no cutting (unless I need to free up some bats early), the mugs pop off at leather soft and I thumb trim them.  The bad thing about a system like this is that you need to learn to center on a non-level surface because after some heavy use they don't sit down perfectly in the slot anymore. Hah!  I don't have a problem wiring off the wheel, but with my limited room it can be hard to swing my body to side and place the mugs on the shelves using both arms.

The throwing was great, the PJ’s not so much. I like the Air conditioner stashed back there for comfort as well.

I'm making YouTube videos now too!   I thought to myself "what is the internet missing?" And guess what, there wasn't a single video of me in my pajamas making mugs, now there is!  Still trying to figure out the whole YouTube thing but I'll get there!

liam, they look like they are a barbershop quartet singing a very happy tune!

Welp, had to go get clay again, was down to my last box.  This time I decided to go ahead and bring a half ton home, which is all I trusted myself and my Tahoe to drive safely in crazy downpour.  500lbs of Klamath yellow and 500 lbs of vashon red.  I really like the yellow as a fast, soft clay and the red as a stiffer smoother clay.  Also picked up two new kiln shelves for the kiln I got in December.  The ones it came with were both cracked and covered in lowfire glaze.  Now I can get 3 shelves of mugs in my kiln at once which will be very nice.  
Speaking of kilns, I'm doing a full bisque right now!  So far I've been able to fill my kiln every week with a bisque, I'm pretty happy with that!  
This week on my workbench is more spoonrests and mugs.  I spent this last week doing just a bunch of spoonrests.

Funny I sat down tonight at a wheel and first it didn’t start, then it ran backwards, then it finally performed normally after I jiggled the footpedal wires. Guess I will do a quick video on cutting these back and repairing them nicely. New strain reliefs, new crimp on connectors all for little money but in good lasting order when they are done. It has come up on this site recently several times now. Time to make a video and link it here somewhere.

Trimming the openings in salt pigs. Think it takes me longer to try and get the holes cut more or less evenly and round than it takes to throw them.

Constant speed, constant torque, constant horsepower.  I learned on a hand control wheel and to this day try and set the speed with my foot then away my foot goes only to return shortly after the speed changes after I load the wheel. When I back off, here goes the speed just a touch, Annoying!
Most of the wheels these days manage speed pretty well until they are loaded requiring more horsepower but when they do and are unloaded their speed ramps up a little. I think I am hyper sensitive to this.
We have 20 wheels mostly whispers and I do like them but they are certainly not the best ever.
You know I would marvel at my father as he matter of fact would tell me about smudge pots under the vehicle and boiling water to fill the radiator all while we were jumping on his tires as we changed them to snow tires in our basement.
My conclusion, I just need to improve my throwing and maybe take some drum lessons to cure the dead foot issue. Every time I watch old potters on a kick wheel I think what kind of whimp am I?

Hmm a skilled potter and talented electrician. Nice glaze!
Just  finished our Rays Cream to get rid of pinholes and dial in the perfect amount of movement with trapped titanium crystals.
Funny,  just pulled this out of the ELECTRIC test kiln today. (Sorry, I know  I have it made, but couldn’t resist)
 

Nice holder!
Just catching up on custom orders for mugs and underglazed stuff. Also working through fixing an existing Bristol glaze for the studio . Arrrrgh dislike these glaze recipes  but almost done, I think.
After spraying countless ornaments  and now these little mugs, cups, treasure boxes I think  I need a throwing break from this stuff! Took a picture of myself spraying and I do not appear to be excited. LOL
 

Hmm a skilled potter and talented electrician. Nice glaze!
Just  finished our Rays Cream to get rid of pinholes and dial in the perfect amount of movement with trapped titanium crystals.
Funny,  just pulled this out of the ELECTRIC test kiln today. (Sorry, I know  I have it made, but couldn’t resist)
 

I'd use porcelain. The lower the absorption rate the better.

@liambesaw
The Rays cream is actually the first layer glaze. It’s only colorant is rutile (titanium) so it has always been an overfired matte where if you were lucky you would get a runny matte in which the crystals collected  in the runs and at the bottom where it would turn shades of blue.
Old recipe, pinholes most of the time, bad chemistry and also started out as a Bristol glaze back in the day to get this to melt around cone 4 ish. 
To answer your question Rays cream was the base and I  have a blue fur over the top (rim dipped to 2”) in a very half hazard manner for this test piece.
The rework was to lower the temp with boron, reduce the zinc to only as needed and eliminate the pin holes while bringing the flux ratio to a durable one. 
They like this glaze because as a runny matte anything over it or it over a smooth glaze has movement. It usually looks pretty good with minimal effort which is what everyone wants Updating this to a more boron controlled melt allows easy dial in of how much run. From there we just need to dial in  the thickness for one dip, two dip, three dip. So SPG for the interns after testing is important for consistent results. Right now this works fine at 140% water to dry glaze at mix time. I think the final dipping thickness will be 135 - 138 ish so a bit thin.
three second dips are the norm in our studio.
I will message you the write up to the resident artists if you want the test recipe to try, just drop me a note.
some generic pics of what this can do depending upon application thickness. All the pinholes, crazing and imperfections have been designed out of it at this point and it works on low expansion porcelain. Now time for the studio artists to figure out what they don’t like about it.
 
 
 
 

It was not actually, but I am a low sodium then low calcium guy anyway with porcelain so when I can reduce these it is usually  decent practice for me. This glaze would actually over fire so badly that it would literally dry up. It had little self healing capability as well. When I solidified this Bristol recipe it fired nicely, no pinholes and matte per the chemistry so LOI is usually not a super high primary interest to me especially if it works when in correct chemistry form..
I find if I can normalize these things in  Stull and they fire per their chemistry then I can move from there to try and get it to look the way everyone thinks it should. Just my method, I am a UMF guy and do like a lot of Tony Hansen’s stuff, as well as Britt, Arbuckle, Katz and many others.
just my method of keeping it simple for me. LOI has never been something I designed to unless I was worried about the efficiency in use of materials.

Isn't that great though?  Throw a beautiful form and then slap it around a bit to make it interesting.  I've recently gotten into paddling my forms on the wheel.  Takes some getting used to but it's a lot of fun!  I'm amazed at how hard I can whack a nice tall cylinder and still be able to shape it a bit afterward!
As far as going electric, I have wanted an electric kiln for a very long time.  Gas firing looks very nice and being able to reduce glazes and body is nice too, but it is expensive for me and requires my full attention for an entire day.  It's tiring and I've got a 5 and 7 year old running around, so I am just glad I have one less thing to worry about.  

I was trained on a large gas kiln and never used electric until a few years ago. Having occasional opportunities to get into community wood firings and raku firing, I'm a happy camper. I finally got  OK with the fact that as much as I loved making my own clay bodies and glazes, and was pretty good at it, my situation just doesn't accommodate that today.  So I am using commercial bodies and glazes and find I like them just fine. I did a head-adjustment on myself to get out from under the old tendency to think gas/wood was superior to electric and that not mixing your own stuff is sort of a petty crime. Now I'm working to get Ok with limited throwing facility and getting into an appreciation of the conceptual and process aspects of hand-building.
My workbench today has a thrown and altered bowl form, then hand-worked with stamped, paddled, & incised techniques. I like how much work actually goes into making something look "other-than" a properly, nicely, thrown bowl.  
 

@liambesaw
The Rays cream is actually the first layer glaze. It’s only colorant is rutile (titanium) so it has always been an overfired matte where if you were lucky you would get a runny matte in which the crystals collected  in the runs and at the bottom where it would turn shades of blue.
Old recipe, pinholes most of the time, bad chemistry and also started out as a Bristol glaze back in the day to get this to melt around cone 4 ish. 
To answer your question Rays cream was the base and I  have a blue fur over the top (rim dipped to 2”) in a very half hazard manner for this test piece.
The rework was to lower the temp with boron, reduce the zinc to only as needed and eliminate the pin holes while bringing the flux ratio to a durable one. 
They like this glaze because as a runny matte anything over it or it over a smooth glaze has movement. It usually looks pretty good with minimal effort which is what everyone wants Updating this to a more boron controlled melt allows easy dial in of how much run. From there we just need to dial in  the thickness for one dip, two dip, three dip. So SPG for the interns after testing is important for consistent results. Right now this works fine at 140% water to dry glaze at mix time. I think the final dipping thickness will be 135 - 138 ish so a bit thin.
three second dips are the norm in our studio.
I will message you the write up to the resident artists if you want the test recipe to try, just drop me a note.
some generic pics of what this can do depending upon application thickness. All the pinholes, crazing and imperfections have been designed out of it at this point and it works on low expansion porcelain. Now time for the studio artists to figure out what they don’t like about it.
 
 
 
 

Hmm a skilled potter and talented electrician. Nice glaze!
Just  finished our Rays Cream to get rid of pinholes and dial in the perfect amount of movement with trapped titanium crystals.
Funny,  just pulled this out of the ELECTRIC test kiln today. (Sorry, I know  I have it made, but couldn’t resist)
 

Hmm a skilled potter and talented electrician. Nice glaze!
Just  finished our Rays Cream to get rid of pinholes and dial in the perfect amount of movement with trapped titanium crystals.
Funny,  just pulled this out of the ELECTRIC test kiln today. (Sorry, I know  I have it made, but couldn’t resist)
 

Hmm a skilled potter and talented electrician. Nice glaze!
Just  finished our Rays Cream to get rid of pinholes and dial in the perfect amount of movement with trapped titanium crystals.
Funny,  just pulled this out of the ELECTRIC test kiln today. (Sorry, I know  I have it made, but couldn’t resist)
 

Hmm a skilled potter and talented electrician. Nice glaze!
Just  finished our Rays Cream to get rid of pinholes and dial in the perfect amount of movement with trapped titanium crystals.
Funny,  just pulled this out of the ELECTRIC test kiln today. (Sorry, I know  I have it made, but couldn’t resist)
 

Got a glaze firing in, was able to fit 40 mugs.  This is a representative sample!  So happy to finally have an electric kiln working!
This week I have a bunch of candles I'm working on, gonna be great!  Right now I have a bunch of lidded containers bisquing, big stuff I have to fire alone, can't really pack it too tight.  Y'all that grew up on electric have no idea how easy youve got it!!!
 

I spent some time on an old estrin one winter and came away with a new feeling for the rhythm of a well made pot. The fly-wheel taught me the importance of wheel speed management and helped me find a rhythm of my own.
I still have access to that estrin and use it from time to time. It's a treat.

It's not new but I did build it a few months back when I set up the studio. My wheel is behind it and the table is open on the back side so I can slide it over the wheel for space saving.