KellySnider

Yes, brushing glazes. I am making handmade mosaic tile pieces, not actually pottery. I'm not that talented yet! Great suggestion on the wax resist - I hadn't thought of that. Thank you!

Hi all, I am rather a newbie - I have my own set up at home complete with a kiln and I am collecting glazes - of which I have about 60 so far. Starting with my white clay I made a test tile for each glaze and marked them. I will also be using a red clay and the thought of repeating that process - which took forever - is making me procrastinate but I really need to get it done. What are some ideas for maybe putting a lot of the glazes on one piece instead of 60 small tiles - space is going to be an issue eventually. TIA for suggestions.

Thank you - this explanation really helps me to understand better about the cones. I read the Orton attachment and I see where it says the tip touching the kiln shelf is considered insignificant so, I’m probably chasing a problem that doesn’t exist. And I checked my program last night after work and see I ran the 05 program, not the 5 - user error at its finest but also, a valuable lesson!

Thank you. And yes, looking back at the program, I did choose 05 instead of 5 - definitely “user error” - lesson learned!

I am a complete newbie to ceramics. I saw a mosaic tile project on stairs that I loved and wanted to duplicate for a backyard project and signed up for a week long intensive tile making class - I learned how to make and glaze the tile but the school took care of all the firing. Though they talked to us about the firing, we weren't involved in the process at all, but it seemed like it was something I could learn - especially as I researched kilns and saw that Skutt's had a touchscreen and pre-programmed settings - for what I'm making I only need to fire to cone 04 and cone 5 and will be using the same type of clay the school used. Maybe some day I will branch out - but this was to get me started on my project. Fast forward to this week - the kiln arrived. We set it up and I did the test fire with the 04 cone on each of the 3 shelves - I ran the default 04 program and some 30 hours later (firing and cooling) I check the cones and all 3 are curved over with just the tips touching the shelves - I know they should be at 90 degrees. Then I realize the default program was firing at "slow" not medium - not knowing anything about anything (maybe I jumped into this endeavor too soon with too little knowledge) I thought I would try the cone 5 with some test tiles I had glazed. (For tile making you paint the raw clay, fire to cone 5, then do the detail work and fire to 04). Those cones never even budged. I put an 04, a 5 and a 6 - the 04 bent slightly (maybe 1/4" and the 5 and 6 didn't bend at all, just turned white. My monitoring app said the kiln reached the proper temperature in both firings so I don't know why the cones didn't respond like expected and while I can call Skutt and have them walk me through some things I'm at work today and until the weekend I won't be home with the kiln during business hours - so I thought I'd start some research on my own. I apologize if these are questions I should know the answer to before I even bought a kiln - I'm super excited about doing my project and wanted to dive in though now I'm feeling like I've bit off too big of a bite for never having worked with ceramics at all but, $5000 in equipment and materials later - I can't quit lol - gotta make it happen. Thank you all in advance for any insight and/or pointers you are willing to share.