Kris Busch

Hi Mark, Hope you had a wonderful trip! Thanks for all the advice. I got my shelves and I'm excited to use them soon. Since I'm using stoneware I think I will skip washing them but will definitely grind and rewash all my posts and shelf chunks before I fire the new shelves. The one's in the picture of my stack are the Chinese nitride bonded which held up for a long time but did warp over time and glaze runs soaked into the shelf and cause plucking if I don't wax the pots with alumina in the wax. I'm hopeful these shelves will hold up as long as I hold up making pots

Mark, Thanks for the advice on no quick cooling. I fire an Olsen kit 24 cf updraft and cool it pretty slow anyway. Do you recommend using wash on the stilts? Is it important to use smaller profile stilts instead of bricks? I mostly do this anyway to have more room for pots. Here's a picture of a typical firing. If you end up coming to the midwest for the eclipse next spring and still have the shelves, I might be interested in them as well as others in my clay guild, localclay.org. My husband is an astrophotographer. We plan to photograph the eclipse next April at our place in southern IN but if the weather is looking better somewhere else we may travel for better conditions and end up closer to MO. We are also heading to Albuquerque in a couple of weeks to photograph the annular eclipse, exciting times for solar activity!

Thanks so much for the reply Mark, and the tips. I ordered some with another potter so the shipping wasn't too bad. I'm hopeful the Bailey shelves will be the last shelves I'll need and look forward to using shelves that won't warp. I've been using the nitrite bonded ones for about 10 years and although they were great for a long time, they are now warped even though I flipped them every firing and have glaze drips that have seeped into the shelves and cause plucking even on stoneware.

I've been researching thermal lite selves from Bailey and found your comments. I was wondering if you find you have to put kiln wash on them? Also do glaze drips adhere to pots in future firings once removed from the shelves? Thanks for any advice. Kris Busch, Bloomington In Functionalceramics.com