Salt fire recipes Albany and cobalt

[Rebekah Krieger]

Hello! 
finally I get to participate in a salt fire. I am using a wood fire porcelain body. 
Question- I have been saving some Albany slip (true) to use in salt firings. Any seasoned potters have experience/recipes that would be reliable? All recipes online that I find are for “Alberta “.  I was hoping for something that would react nicely with the salt atmosphere.

 

also, when I fire oxidation I use cobalt oxide in neph sye for ^6 For brushwork  (For the old school Blue brushwork look).  What would you do for ^10 salt fire? I realize this atmosphere is much different than what I normally fire. 
 

lastly, if you do share a recipe- I would like to know if it’s ok to use it on bisque ware or greenware. Half of my pots have been bisque fired already. 

thank you! 

[Callie Beller Diesel]

Alberta slip was designed to be a replacement for Albany (the Alberta is an amended clay), and probably most of those Alberta slip recipes originally had Albany in them instead. A good place to start would be to just substitute them straight across. I've never worked with Albany myself, but I had mentors that said the Albany gave preferable results. My understanding is that Albany was a tenmoku all by itself. Alberta is too in theory, but in practice it needs some amendments. I think I have a nice amber glaze that has some Alberta/Albany in it. It's a good liner glaze if you're interested.

You don't usually need to cut the cobalt with flux when it's going in a cone ten salt or soda to get it to adhere to the pot, but if you use what you've got, I don't see it really going amiss. Don't mix anything special for a cobalt wash. 

You probably already know that salt glaze is a result of the sodium vapor reacting directly with the silica in the clay. What isn't as intuitive the first few times in a salt/soda is that the sodium will EAT into the clay to do this. Sharply textured hakeme slip will be softened if they're in the juicy parts of the kiln, and painted decoration will blur or even disappear, depending on how much salt hits that particular surface. Expect to loose detail, and use it as a good thing.

 Depending on how heavily they intend to salt the kiln should inform how you decorate. If they intend to use a moderate to heavy amount of salt, just line the pots with a celadon or an amber and let the kiln do the rest. If they have known dry spots, then your cobalt decorated pots would go well in those spots. You could even do some subtle slip painting a la Cathi Jefferson. She uses a lot of slips to do some lovely botanical decoration on her pots. I have a bunch of her recipes from a workshop. Let me know which ones sound intriguing and I'll dig out my old notes.

[neilestrick]

10 hours ago, Callie Beller Diesel said:

salt glaze is a result of the sodium vapor reacting directly with the silica in the clay.

Sorry to be picky, but it's actually a reaction of the sodium vapor with the silica and alumina in the clay. Silica itself will not be affected by the sodium vapor. Gotta have all 3.

[Callie Beller Diesel]

17 minutes ago, neilestrick said:

Sorry to be picky, but it's actually a reaction of the sodium vapor with the silica and alumina in the clay. Silica itself will not be affected by the sodium vapor. Gotta have all 3.

True. I'm trying to keep it simple to start with.