Adding washed wood ash in Glazy calculator

[Luca Ask]

I would like to try and use the glaze calculator for some my recipes with washed wood ash. I tried using the materials wood ash and mixed wood ash. I noticed that the analisis used for these ash are all as unwashed ash.
Is there a possibility to use in the calculator washed wood ash as a material??
Is there some material that can be enought similar?
I know that wood ashes are very different one to the other, but this is true in the same way for washed and unwashed ashed.
It could be interesting to add washed wood ash as a possibile material to use in the Glazy calculator.

[Sorcery]

Reckon it's just too variable.

Washed and unwashed can have 100 variants.

Not to mention the thousands of variants from the tree, soil, blah blah.....

Have you peeped the recent Washington Street Studios Youtube Vid on Woodash glazes? It's good!

 

Sorce

[Luca Ask]

Yes, I have seen it the last Saturday. Very interesting. Thank you for giving me the link!

Glaze calculator is an interesting tool, could be interesting to have the possibility to add temporarily a new material of which the hypothetical chemical analyzes are inserted.

 

[Sorcery]

I reckon if you get a large enough batch of ash, it could make it worth it to test it for actual composition.

But it kinda ruins the interest of the Ash in the first place. Like, you'd quicker make the same glazes with equal additions of Calcium, Potash, etc, from clean sources without the Ash processing step.

So it would seem you are running in a giant circle of wasted time just to play with "caustic" ashes!

I think you'll find, as I have, that it's faster to fire tests and see, than make calculations and guess, fire then see.

I had this thought yesterday....

I love the variables that pottery offers. It is through controlling these variables that we define our pallette. So finding these variables is key.

So I can't argue your idea. You are controlling the variables. It's just that you can more quickly find the variables you wish to control with tests on cookies. 

Then you will also find YOUR variables, YOUR pallette, which is when the additional efforts should be allowed to take your precious time.

 

Sorce

[Luca Ask]

Yes, of course!

I dont want to loose too much time in trying to make calculation, but it was interesting to play with the calculator and I realized that it didn't make any sense to add wood ash as ingredient material: because I use washed wood ash. Washed a lot. It is too much different.

Probably it didn't make sense also adding washed wood ash as ingredient material in the glazy calculator. But at least it might have some little sense!

Do you know if washing the ash you loose also the magnesium or only sodium and potassium?

 

[Min]

12 hours ago, Sorcery said:

I think you'll find, as I have, that it's faster to fire tests and see, than make calculations and guess, fire then see.

With all due respect I disagree. Glaze calculation software is another tool in the tool box. It doesn't replace mixing and test firing glaze samples, what it does do is help better understand what we are doing with a glaze. Tell me the silica:alumina ratio or flux ratios of R2O:RO or COE or LOI or Unity Molecular Formula just by looking at a glaze test tile. Tell me how much wollastonite to sub for whiting and still have the correct silica amount, or any other of the myriad possibilities for oxide subs. Tell me how much silica to add to bring a matte glaze to a gloss and still have it melt well. Sure you can take the shotgun approach and test a million test glazes or you can narrow the field with glaze calc.  It isn't guessing, with experience and some knowledge of materials using glaze calc is a huge time (and materials) saver. Granted it does take some time learning how to use glaze calc software.