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I need to find the best All-In-One clay for cone 5, great for both hand building and wheel throwing I know. That's a tall order. But I can dream. I have a pug mill and don't want 2 bodies. Problem: I have too many problems with my gas kiln for cone 06 anymore. I'm DONE. I am moving to cone 5. Criteria / Factors: I'm in Southern California I teach 180 high school students grades 9-12, all levels of art skills, so it has to take punishment Not too sandy on the wheel, not too smooth or squishy for hand building Not too dense so it is so top-heavy when trimming I'm willing to pug the new clay to soften it for throwing, if it is stiff and great for hand building, or visa versa Doesn't stain clothes or the tables, rolling pins, or make a mess everywhere Is not pure white (students can't see where they missed glazing spots when using light color glazes - painting) Good leather hard, doesn't soften up too easily when re-wetting to score things together Doesn't take every indentation to the surface of pieces, temperamentalD Centers on the wheel fairly easily, especially for teen girls with tiny hands Can take a good amount of water from beginners Pulling walls, it is strong, doesn't warp or sag easily Won't dry out too quickly in hands while hand building Doesn't bend or warp easily when removing from the wheel Not so soft that it caves when cutting and sliding off the wheel Doesn't make teens hate the class because it stains clothes or gets everywhere and of course, takes glazes well and can handle a little fluctuation in gas environments Cone 5 clays I've Tried: Laguna - Dover White: Nice clay, but pure white. easy to center, but A little soft when hand building Laguna - Plain (Buff): Nice light tan color, easy center and to rehydrate if repairing, but a bit too squishy and shows every dent Laguna - Moroccan Sand: I love this clay, doesn't leave residue - color, but a bit dense to center. It is really dark grayish brown, if they only could lighten it Laguna - Buff with Sand: Nice tan color, but WAY too sandy for students on the wheel Laguna - Greystone: Too dense and top heavy for small pieces, hard to center, but really takes a beating with water, warps when thin due to density of surrounding clay Laguna - Speckled Buff: A bit dark in color, has iron so it gets read everywhere, could stain (think girls with pure white vans) Laguna - LB-6: hmmm, can't remember, but nixed it very soon after Laguna - Sante Fe: OMG - red EVERYWHERE, like a crime scene Aardvark Clay - SBF - Too dark tan - a bit sticky for students Aardvark Clay -Arctic White: Too white Opinions???? Go!!!

Being a less-than-tall person, I bought an L&L 18" deep kiln - I couldn't reach the bottom of the 27â€ers. Kiln works great, tho I have to add degrees to the cone offset for 04 bisquing, and remove some from cone 6, ( according to my witness cones). Actually right now I’m using the cone 5 setting and that seems to get my 6 cone to the right spot. My e28s has 4 elements and 2 thermocouples, and this creates some challenges. I get even responses from my witness cones only if I fire with only 2 shelves. With 3 shelves in, the witness cones vary widely. I’ve tried every variation on shelf placement I can think of, including staggering and using 2 1/2 half shelves. The manufacturer says that you need 2 elements and 1 thermocouple per shelf, and I’m pretty sure I also read that the shelves should clear the elements. With my kiln , that means you can only have 2 shelves in, and when I follow these guidelines the kiln gods do favor me with matching witness cones. This has all turned out not to be a big problem for me anyway, because I haven’t had as much time as I’d hoped I would to be making stuff. Also running the kiln seems to cost me only about $10 a month for 3-4 firings. I expected the cost to be much higher. I'm making less at one time, but also getting more instant gratification, (instant being a relative term when applied to a slowly cooling kiln). Should I be less concerned about matching cones? I assume it's a matter of degree. It can be more than 1 cone. Also, I have been "lidding" the load with the 2 unused half shelves because I feel I should have them in there to increase the thermal mass, which is already 1/3 less than what the kiln could hold. Any thoughts on that? Thank you in advance for your advice and experience Irene in NJ

Week 8 New quiz folks, another hodge podge of thought raising questions. All of the Earthenware clay bodies can be lumped into 3 arbitrary groups: pure earthenware, talc, and kaolin bodies fritted, grogged, and kaolin bodies pure earthenware, fritted, and talc bodies pure earthenware, kaolin, and fritted bodies As temperature decreases, flux increases, and ________________ decreases. Feldspar kaolin ball clay quartz The thinnest, and lightest of kiln shelves are made of a ____________________composition. high alumina cordierite nitride bonded silicon carbide ____________ glazes are used in a lot of studios to avoid throwing small bits of glazes down the drain Trash Raw Commercial Ash This weeks questions come from text in Electric Studio: Making and Firing, edited by Bill Jones, c. 2016, The American Ceramic Society Note from Pres: This is one of the newer books(paperback) in my library. If for nothing else, it has a large area on the use of , repair and firing of electric kilns. This includes sections on kiln furniture, repair and upkeep. Answers: c) pure earthenware, fritted, and talc bodies Pure earthenware clay-as mined it can contain varying amounts of flux and other impurities and it fires to whatever temperature its contaminants (sodium, potassium, iron, etc.) dictate. Fritted bodies think of it as porcelain (25 kaolin, 25 ball clay, 50 non-plastics) but with much of the non-plastics being frit and the frit often containing boron. Two subsets exist; one with lots of nepheline syenite as a flux source, another with whiting (calcium carbonate), which is problematic because its firing range is narrow. There are, of course, an infinite range of mixes of frits, feldspar, and nepheline syenite in this group. Talc bodies-similar to porcelain but they have use talc (magnesium aluminum silicate mineral) as the principal flux. Again, talc, frit, nepheline syenite, and feldspar are mixed in infinite variety to make low-fire clay bodies. The clearest example is 50 talc and 50 ball clay. Talc bodies have very little silicate glass, in fact they have very little silica and consequently they can be terribly weak better for figurines than for functional ware. (d) Quartz As firing temperature decreases, flux increases and quartz decreases. Natural Earthenware clay, as mined, contains all the sodium, potassium, iron and other fluxes necessary to fire to maturity without added materials. c) nitride bonded From an image caption. . . . The relative thickness of three 18x24-inch kiln shelves composed of different materials. The thickest(left), a 1-inch cordierite/high alumina shelf weighing 21 pounds; the next is a thinner but denser 3/4:-inch silicon carbide shelf that weighing 20 pounds; and the thinnest shelf, a 3/16-inch silicon carbide nitride bonded shelf weighing only 9 1/2 pounds! (a) Trash It’s a fairly common practice in large studios to make what’s called a “trash glaze†using the remaining bits of various shop glazes to avoid throwing glaze materials down the drain.

I am looking to get an angle grinder for doing kiln shelves. There are a lot of different models out there, what should I look for so that I get one that will work for doing kiln shelves. Here are some of the things I have found I need to choose from (so far): Amps 7, 9, or 11 Weight of the tool 5-7 pounds 9,000-12,000 rpm Type of control switch... paddle seems to be preferred Disc sizes 41/2 or 7 Brand, I recognize quite a few and have always had good luck with DEWALT tools. Once I decide on the model to get I need to know what kind of grinding wheel I will need: General grinding wheel Masonry grinding wheel Diamond Grinding CUP Flat grinding wheel Etc So those of you that have one and use it to do kiln shelves any recommendations? Anything I am not considering? Thanks for your help. T

I need to replace my broken kiln shelves and I wondered if I could cut vermiculite sheet to size and use this for the shelves (as would save me money). I now vermiculite can withstand high temp, but wondered if anyone had any experience with this. Thanks.

I used to stack shelves where ever I could find a place to put them-which seemed to always be in the way in the shop. Being a small room, I just could never find a place out of the way to store them. I decided last year enough moving them around-I built a cart out of scrap materials from a deck build and added heavy wheels to the base. It works well in my situation as I can push it into a corner or some other area and have it out of the way, yet have it handy when I need to load or unload the kiln. It is also easy to get it to the work area for kiln washing or scraping. How do you store your shelves?