Morgan

Before you add water etc slam the heck out of it on a concrete floor on each side. I order clay by the tons and all the bags of clay feel harder than a rock. Once you slam them it "wakes" up the clay. If it is still too hard, then do the water/bucket method. 

Before you add water etc slam the heck out of it on a concrete floor on each side. I order clay by the tons and all the bags of clay feel harder than a rock. Once you slam them it "wakes" up the clay. If it is still too hard, then do the water/bucket method. 

Before you add water etc slam the heck out of it on a concrete floor on each side. I order clay by the tons and all the bags of clay feel harder than a rock. Once you slam them it "wakes" up the clay. If it is still too hard, then do the water/bucket method. 

Before you add water etc slam the heck out of it on a concrete floor on each side. I order clay by the tons and all the bags of clay feel harder than a rock. Once you slam them it "wakes" up the clay. If it is still too hard, then do the water/bucket method. 

Before you add water etc slam the heck out of it on a concrete floor on each side. I order clay by the tons and all the bags of clay feel harder than a rock. Once you slam them it "wakes" up the clay. If it is still too hard, then do the water/bucket method. 

I always compress and never dealt with a cracks, but when I switched to Laguna frost it was about half my pieces regardless of shape. It’s known for being picky but this caused me to change a lot.
As babs mentioned wedging is key. What really resolved my issue was spending a LOT of time compressing, I mean a lot. Always compress outside > in and force that clay down onto itself in the center. Clearly dry it correctly etc but I have all but gotten rid of the issue but it’s a serious time suck.

I always compress and never dealt with a cracks, but when I switched to Laguna frost it was about half my pieces regardless of shape. It’s known for being picky but this caused me to change a lot.
As babs mentioned wedging is key. What really resolved my issue was spending a LOT of time compressing, I mean a lot. Always compress outside > in and force that clay down onto itself in the center. Clearly dry it correctly etc but I have all but gotten rid of the issue but it’s a serious time suck.

It’s not good reclaim if it doesn’t have mold! I’m kidding but part of me wants to think it helps somehow haha

It’s not good reclaim if it doesn’t have mold! I’m kidding but part of me wants to think it helps somehow haha

I spoke with my supplier last week, and they said that Plainsman has a 4 year supply IF no one hoards it. Mike at Ceramics Canada has said he won’t sell more than a 50 lb bag at a time unless you’ve been making your own clay body with it. 
So please don’t panic buy. Give everyone ample time to reformulate behind the scenes while still using their current stock.

Hard to add to what’s been said but ya apples and oranges.
i personally have both. I prefer Shopify but it is totally on you to drive traffic there, seo, marketing etc. Etsy does this for you (rather poorly)…but as Neil points out it is beyond saturated. If you don’t have tons of sales and tons of reviews it’s almost impossible. I did spend a good chunk on Etsy ads to get a small amount of sales and reviews (think like 300 sales and well over a 100 5 star reviews) so now I just let it ride if something sells on there, great, but I don’t care as my focus is on Shopify site. 
if you do try Etsy spend a ton of time on seo (look at competitors), have great pics, a lot of listings if you can, focus on good titles, tags etc. But again, Etsy is hard now but doable still if your willing to do it well, have a good product and so forth. 
 
In the end if I could have done it all over again I would have probably just focused on good content via social media/instagram/fb and invested time and money on meta ads, google ads and just drove traffic to my Shopify store alone and never bothered with Etsy. 
 
The vast chunk of my sales are from direct in person markets so that helps me not care so much about online sales…but ya if I never had to do another market I would probably die happy.

Bumping this on more info the mine has plans to reopen even though it closed for financial reasons, or is this just speculation?

Hard to add to what’s been said but ya apples and oranges.
i personally have both. I prefer Shopify but it is totally on you to drive traffic there, seo, marketing etc. Etsy does this for you (rather poorly)…but as Neil points out it is beyond saturated. If you don’t have tons of sales and tons of reviews it’s almost impossible. I did spend a good chunk on Etsy ads to get a small amount of sales and reviews (think like 300 sales and well over a 100 5 star reviews) so now I just let it ride if something sells on there, great, but I don’t care as my focus is on Shopify site. 
if you do try Etsy spend a ton of time on seo (look at competitors), have great pics, a lot of listings if you can, focus on good titles, tags etc. But again, Etsy is hard now but doable still if your willing to do it well, have a good product and so forth. 
 
In the end if I could have done it all over again I would have probably just focused on good content via social media/instagram/fb and invested time and money on meta ads, google ads and just drove traffic to my Shopify store alone and never bothered with Etsy. 
 
The vast chunk of my sales are from direct in person markets so that helps me not care so much about online sales…but ya if I never had to do another market I would probably die happy.

I kind of got burned by not specifically stating 325 on an order one time (lesson learned) so of coarse they sent the much cheaper 200. For some glazes I could not tell but others were super apparent and 325 gave a superior finish/melt.

This looks great will try it out thanks!

Bill that’s correct. I get a fairly perfect cone 6 bend with that schedule. Every kiln is different obviously and the drop down and hold is for clearing up and healing. 
 
Here is the post on Tony’s site that gives further info:
https://digitalfire.com/schedule/plc6ds

I can only speak for my glazes and results but after I started doing a small hold at top for 10m (~2190-2200 depending on kiln load), a drop down to 2085 for 30m all of my glaze issues for the most part are good. I seem to get a nicer finish on both matte and glossy with the hold vs just going to peak temp. This is the digital fire drop and soak (no slow cool) schedule and I have never looked back.

I can only speak for my glazes and results but after I started doing a small hold at top for 10m (~2190-2200 depending on kiln load), a drop down to 2085 for 30m all of my glaze issues for the most part are good. I seem to get a nicer finish on both matte and glossy with the hold vs just going to peak temp. This is the digital fire drop and soak (no slow cool) schedule and I have never looked back.

100% agree

100% agree

Ya it’s all over the place…I saw Seattle pottery supply trying to sell 50lbs for over $8k. Speechless on that one even with high prices. I do know one supplier that had a large cache that was not fine so they had it done and sell it much much cheaper (relatively) to a lot of others.
trinity ceramic supply in tx. 

Hi Morgan 
No I never got into the habit of wiping my pieces down before glazing as I’m usually in such a rush to get things in the kiln. This was some time ago when I used to work in a studio and the piece didn’t reach full temp so I refired it and this is what happened. I reckon I contaminated it with moving it from A to B but will take more care in the future. I thought it was something to do with firing it twice! 

Super hard for me to see the pics are small to my eyes but looks like it could just me as simple as brushing on a white matte glaze unevenly/thin/thick and maybe a brushed cobalt wash? Could be underglaze but seems more like a wash from afar. 

Super hard for me to see the pics are small to my eyes but looks like it could just me as simple as brushing on a white matte glaze unevenly/thin/thick and maybe a brushed cobalt wash? Could be underglaze but seems more like a wash from afar. 

Super hard for me to see the pics are small to my eyes but looks like it could just me as simple as brushing on a white matte glaze unevenly/thin/thick and maybe a brushed cobalt wash? Could be underglaze but seems more like a wash from afar.