akilpots
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Posts posted by akilpots
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i was trying out a bunch of different laguna clays as they are the closest supplier to me i found one that i liked at cone 6.
laguna RSMC
but mostly i've been using archie bray's Wally's Blush absorption rate is great at cone 6 and the fired color is very nice for the kind of work that i make.
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for people that mix their own glazes how many are you managing in your studio? i have a smallish home studio in my garage and wish i could manage like a dozen but about 5 seems more likely.
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definitely multiple slips, glazes, and firings....and a lot of testing. reminds me of tony marsh's crucible works. and some of jim malone's textured works. there's a good goldmark gallery video on jim malone where you can see him making some of these textured pots. he's applying dry clay to the surface of a pot while it's still wet on the wheel.
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I've been working on this simple cone 6 glossy base using the cheapest materials at my supplier. also developed during matt katz's course.
https://glazy.org/recipes/420048
- GEP and Bill Kielb
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good podcast episode on the subject
https://ceramicmaterialsworkshop.com/podcastepisode/episode-20-should-i-be-afraid-of-silicosis/
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yeah thats right he calls it "packed bed porosity"
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i've had some success with some glazes doing a drop and hold but with other the pinholes still prevail. i just finished matt katz's understanding glazes course and he has a compelling theory that the particle packing in some glazes or clay bodies is the ultimate source of the pinhole problem and that adding a small amount of darvan to help the particles pack better will eliminate the pin holing problem. i have yet to test it on my own but the data and experiments were compelling.
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From what i have seen in community studios in nyc and la most people trying the wheel for a single class or for their first session of classes tend to want to fire and keep much of the work they make. I think this is totally understandable from their point of view and the studios point of view. I do notice that as people take additional classes or become members that they become more discerning about what they push through the entire process. this is just from my point of view others may have differing opinions. I have always felt like it's kind of a double edged sword...to get better at glazing you need pots to glaze so you simply cannot toss everything until you are a master thrower if you are paying for classes or a studio membership in a ceramics studio. maybe if you are in a university program its different.
personally i've had some teachers that talk about things like vitrification, glaze flaws, best studio practices and others who haven't. it really is kind of a mixed bag and sometimes very dependent on the students asking questions beyond the basics.
as for social media you are only getting a small glimpse into someone's life/practice best not to pass judgement on what you see there.
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ok thanks. next time ill try cone 5 with a hold and see how that does.
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I've done 3 cone 6 glaze firings in my l&l easyfire kiln it's over firing by a bit each time consistently and evenly across the kiln. do i use a cone offset for this or the thermocouple offset? how much should it be offset? this is a 5 - 6 - 7 cone pack.
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not much to say about your kiln choices. but i just want to 2nd calling Rob @ northwest potters supply. I bought my l&l kiln from him this year and it was a very smooth transaction. he was also super helpful resolving an issue with one of the relays that arrived stuck in the on position.
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where is this located? im interested in the dry materials and oxides.
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don't know what the glaze is but i think you could probably get pretty close in recreating it doing progression line blends with cobalt in a glossy base. looks like these pieces have a white slip on top of the body clay also. good thing is you dont need much cobalt to make a very blue glaze...bad thing is cobalt is pretty expensive these days.
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i dont make coasters but i do make tiles sometimes so these tips should apply...
make slabs of stiff leather hard clay.
you can dust the inside of the cookie cutter with cornstarch to help each piece release.
make sure you are drying them out somewhere with no drafts. you want each one to dry evenly so like not having the left side dry faster than the right side.
the less drying they need to do when cut from the slab the better chance you'll have at them staying flat.
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i have a bunch of books they are great for going deep into a subject, a quick reference when in the studio, or getting some inspiration from works of the past. videos/youtube have probably been my number one teacher after actual in-person teachers though. it's really hard to not give youtube it's due. i've watched so many videos on there truly an amazing resource...marguerite wildenhain throwing pots at pond farm, warren mckenzie making dropped rim bowls, pete pinnell talking about cups and mugs, voulkos at archie bray, maria martinez making coil pots, all the goldmark gallery videos, hsin chuen lin's amazing catalog of throwing lessons, john britt's glaze videos, lina christianson demos, lots of nceca talks, and many many many other potters from around the world.
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and the catalog the gallery put out after the exhibit in los angeles is great very much worth buying.
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there's also an old issue of studio potter magazine that has a brief interview with doyle and 4 other black ceramicists from los angeles.
this is a good roundtable discussion between ricky swallow who curated the exhibit and artists that knew doyle.
and this is another short video about him
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they are brushing glazes? if you brush to glaze your pieces then you should be fine to brush how many ever will fit on to a piece and fire it. even if they arent brushing glazes and you are just trying to get a sense of them you could brush them on fire it and see what you like out of the 60 and then run a set of test tiles with those. might be helpful to make use wax resist to draw a grid on the test piece and glaze each square if you want to minimize them running into each other.
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what are your goals? to learn about glaze chemistry? to just mix up a glaze and use it on your pieces? what kind of work do you make? are you concerned with it being a durable stable glaze or not so much?
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7 minutes ago, smesa said:
Could the humidity in the air be causing my pieces to stay wet for much longer than usual?
yes. try a pre-heat when you biscuit fire your pieces and that may help drive out some of the excess moisture.
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On 7/22/2023 at 5:39 PM, baetheus said:
@glazenerd Sorry for the late reply. Thank you for this information. I'm still waiting on an electrician, the city of Davis, and our electrical company to sort out whether I actually have the necessary 48Amps available to drive my kiln before they run the copper. Lots of fun, that is. Anyway, I've come back around to thinking through clay recipes and I am hoping that you'll offer more wisdom. Unfortunately, I'm reliant on someone else to fire my test bars right now so I don't have any solid data to interpret yet, thus everything below is theoretical. To make things easier, I've put the final versions of my chicken scratch notes for clay and glaze starting points on glazy.org here: https://glazy.org/u/baetheus/recipes
First, let's start with clays. https://glazy.org/recipes/358868 and https://glazy.org/recipes/358852
1. Based on this part of your comment, "Higher calcium content will increase plasticity when alumina content is higher because calcium creates isomorphic substitution (don’t ask) at a higher rate than sodium or potassium." I started looking at wollastonite as an ingredient for my clay body instead of straight sil-co-sil. According to Tom over at digitalfire the physical properties of wollastonite reduce shrinkage and from your comment the calcium could potentially aid in plasticity (although I sense potential nuance here).2. When mixing up test batches of lincoln 60 and lincoln 8 I found the fresh mixed (+30% water across all blends was sufficient) wet clay to be fairly plastic but not immediately throwable. I did not age any of the blends yet, but I am confident that I will need to increase plasticity--thus the addition of 2% bentonite as a start.
3. Using your basic notes of 75% Clay, 15% Feldspar, 10% Silica as a starting point I adjusted ingredients, keeping total clay below 75%, until glazy listed the Si:Al ratio as somewhere around 5:1. Does this seem sensible?
Second, your namesake, glazes. Originally, I had planned to start my glaze journey by simply using the "cheapest" clear glaze recipe I could find in the John Britt midfire glaze book. This looked like it was going to be the Val Cushing Transparent 3 glaze. However, after spending the entire morning reading about the end of Gerstley/Gellespie Borate and then finding the physical sources of all of the other ingredients in the clear glaze table of Britt's book, I decided that it might be better to formulate my base glaze in the same spirit as my first clay body. This is to say, start from scratch with the same constraints. To this end I used the Val Cushing Transparent 3 glaze as a starting point. https://glazy.org/materials/1577. I have two starting points, one using Kaolin from a mine here in Ione, CA and another using the Lincoln 60 or Lincoln 8 clays. With the exception of silica added to the glaze using kaolin, my approach to both formulations was that same. Again, please correct me where my approach is incorrect.
1. I started with a similar amount of feldspar, choosing minspar only because of the drift I've read about in custer feldspar. After reading through digital fire I convinced myself that the feldspars (neph sye, custer, minspar) could not work as the only melters in a glaze, since they don't melt on their own at cone 6.2. From there I added 10% kaolin to suspend the glaze.
3. Then I added 1% zinc oxide as a primary flux instead of one of the borates. Although gellespie borate comes in at less than half the cost of zinc oxide, it requires 13x as much material than this formulation. My hope is that 1% zinc is enough. My concern here is that it's likely my first colorants will be the iron oxides, which I've read are dulled by zinc oxide. I'm also concerned that 1% will not be enough to achieve a full melt.
4. Lastly, I shored up the glaze with wollastonite and silica, believing that the calcium would strengthen the glaze and using the silica to push the Si:Al ratio as close to Val Cushings 8.2 as I could.
From there I pretty much played with materials until the UMF formula was as close to the V.C. Transparent 3 glaze as I could get it.
In conclusion, I hope that this all makes sense and any input you'd have on how I might change my planning process would be greatly appreciated. Additionally, if you have any advice for which materials to start with as far as line blends are concerned that would really help!
P.S. I didn't mean to single out glazenerd here. I would love to hear thoughts from everyone on any of this process. So please, help me learn!I don't know if this glaze is going to work at cone 6. You need some fairly specific zinc levels to get a bristol glaze reaction which will get the temp of the glaze to melt at cone 6 without using boron. the val cushing recipe you link has 0.15 B203 from the 13% gerstley borate and this is what is melting the glaze at cone 6. you need something like 0.2-0.5 Zn and the rest of your RO flux getting you around that 0.7 sweet spot for a durable glaze. (ideally you'd have a R2O:RO ratio of 0.3:0.7) you'll be getting some Ca from the wollastonite so it's just about dialing in the proper amounts for the type of glaze you want and the materials you are using. you will for sure have muted colors from the zinc in the glaze. personally i think it's easier to use a boron source to bring the temp down to get a good melt and durable glaze at cone 6.
QoW: What clay body or bodies do you work with. . . .
in Int'l Ceramic Artists Network (ICAN) Operations and Benefits
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i dont think it makes my skin itchy it is a rough clay body though.