Book recommendations?

[Toper]

I recently became the glaze mixer for a small community studio. Mostly that means I just follow other people's recipes, but every so often I have to fix a problematic glaze, and we like to introduce new ones occasionally. For instance, I tried a chrome-tin pink from a recipe I found on the internet; it's great in some respects but has turned out to crawl a bit and somehow the bucket of glaze seems to have changed over time such that there's less pink and more white.

 

So I'd like to learn more about glaze ingredients and colorants -- what they do, how they react, how to fix problems that appear. Can anyone recommend books on the subject? The studio only fires at cone 6 in an electric kiln at the moment, so that's primarily what I care about.

 

Thanks!

[Pres]

I recently became the glaze mixer for a small community studio. Mostly that means I just follow other people's recipes, but every so often I have to fix a problematic glaze, and we like to introduce new ones occasionally. For instance, I tried a chrome-tin pink from a recipe I found on the internet; it's great in some respects but has turned out to crawl a bit and somehow the bucket of glaze seems to have changed over time such that there's less pink and more white.

 

So I'd like to learn more about glaze ingredients and colorants -- what they do, how they react, how to fix problems that appear. Can anyone recommend books on the subject? The studio only fires at cone 6 in an electric kiln at the moment, so that's primarily what I care about.

 

Thanks!

 

 

Look for the strand here about the book Mastering Cone 6 Glazes. should help you out quite a bit.

[Guest JBaymore]

No sense repeating .... so...... also see these threads for info about DigitalFire.com and other realted stuff:

 

http://ceramicartsda...tenn-ball-clay/

 

http://ceramicartsda...aze-calculator/

 

http://ceramicartsdaily.org/community/topic/1362-silicaalumina-ratio-in-glaze-glossy-or-matt/

 

best,

 

..............john

[Toper]

Look for the strand here about the book Mastering Cone 6 Glazes. should help you out quite a bit.

 

Thanks! I actually own that book, but it's been unhelpful -- the in-depth sections are largely about detailed stability and durability testing, which isn't my major concern. (We're primarily serving beginner to intermediate students, so my first priority is glazes that just look cool and fire consistently; professional-quality pieces are in the minority, so durability isn't as big a deal.) The other tips feel scattered and incomplete. It feels like the book is meant to plug common holes in the knowledge of a slightly miseducated reader, but I don't have that knowledge to begin with.

 

I'm looking more for a resource that might help me understand, what makes this glaze glossy and that one matte? Why does this glaze do cool things when I layer it over other glazes? What might I try if I want a glaze to crawl less? What's calcium carbonate for? What makes a celadon a celadon?

 

Is there a decent textbook or something? I had The Potter's Dictionary of Materials and Techniques out from the library for a while, which helped, but was kind of hoping for a reference focusing on glazes specifically.

 

Or am I better off buying a piece of software and just using their tools and reference libraries? (John, thanks for those links as well.)

[Benhim]

If you're at cone 10 this book is a pretty decent reference book about materials, mixing techniques, application etc. If you're at cone 6 the book still has a wealth of knowlege, but some of the information won't be relevant in your temperature. I've read it, but don't yet own it because I've been firing in cone 6 and less. I do really like it though and am thinking of adding it to my library.

 

http://books.google....20books&f=false

 

And as for the Digital Fire software, it's really great. Being a glaze mixer for a studio you could benefit from the program. Especially once you figure out the basic parameters that your glazes should be fitting in, the program would help you fix glazes much easier than a reference book.