Katie Piro

I have a KM-1027 touchscreen also and spent a considerable amount of time looking for the "cool down" menu item, like the non touchscreens have before realizing it no longer existed! I use the Cone 6 Slow Cool Schedule from the book Amazing Glaze by Gabriel Kline from Odyssey Clayworks. Segment 1: 100 degrees per hour up to 200 degrees. Segment 2: 450 degrees per hour to 1900 degrees. Segment 3: 108 degrees per hour to 2196 degrees. Segment 4: 150 degrees per hour to 1700 degrees. It's very easy to program. I also really recommend this book. Tons of great recipes,

I like Podcasts, but I do tend to tune them out when I'm focusing and then I have to start the episode all over! Lore is my favorite. If I need some calm in my life it'll be something folksy. Otherwise, some of my favorite bands that I can sing along to. Marina and the Diamonds is a good one for me. I can't do anything with a really fast tempo or hard rock beats. I find it actually tenses up my muscles while I'm working.

High School Ceramics teacher here. I've taught it both ways as an experiment to see which would click more for the students and be easier for them to create quality vessels on the wheel. And though it's more complicated to teach, the results were overwhelmingly better when you create the curved base for a bowl right away. So now, that's the way I teach it. I agree with @Presabout breaking things down into those 3 main components: Cylinder, Bowl, and Plate (Wide & Flat Shapes). From there, they can manipulate the clay to do a thousand different things.

A few questions and suggestions: Why do you have your GiffinGrip on a bat? I have mine adhered directly to my wheel head and it clips on nice and tight. Have you tried dismantling it, bringing it back to the factory set up and re-assembling it? Maybe that's why there's some wiggle? You've had it a year, has it always done this? I noticed that with mine if I tried to trim when my pieces were just a hair too soft, I would get squeamish about tightening the pieces all the way to avoid warping the piece near the rim. But once I recognized the problem and waited until they wer

Thanks @Sorcery!! Piro will be my married name (currently engaged). Flows a lot better than McKeown and I probably won't have to tell people how to spell it as frequently. I'll check out that YouTube series. Thanks guys! Katie

Wow you guys are AWESOME! I have right now commercially mixed PC Midnight Blue, Mayco's Sand & Sea, and Mayco's White Gloss. I use Cone 5/6 Stoneware. I have a cream colored, and buff speckled, and hopefully will soon experiment with some darker colored clays. I'm thinking to build up to: Clear: Odyssey Clear (Amazing Glaze, Kline) White: Odyssey White (Amazing Glaze, Kline) Red: Raspberry (Mastering Cone 6 Glazes) John's Straw Ash (Mid-Range Glazes) Blue: Variegated Slate Blue (Mid-Range Glazes) Green: Spermint (Amazing Glaze, Kline)

Thank you! You just listed many of the glazes I really like from that book. Not only did I read the whole first half, I have it outlined and highlighted! (Can you tell I'm a teacher?) I also purchased John Britt's Mid Range Glazes, as well as Amazing Glaze by Kline. Any others you'd recommend? You've been a great help! Thanks! Katie

Hi Everyone! Longtime lurker. All the information you post has been SO HELPFUL to me as I start to get my fledgling pottery business off the ground. I'm looking to make the switch from commercial to homemade glazes in the near future and have some picked out that I'd like to replicate. Mostly from Mastering Cone 6 Glazes. I was wondering, for those of you that operate out of a home studio, how many homemade glazes do you keep on hand? Thanks! Katie Piro