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New. Inevitable.
Jan. 24th, 2024 11:19 amDid things every day over the weekend. Brain is mush. In the office but very ineffective.
Kiln openings very interesting.
There were no issues with the bisque kiln, whatever weird loud cracking noises I heard was I guess normal.
The glaze kiln opening was very interesting. The kiln had fired to a pretty high cone 6, we didn't have a cone 7 witness cone so who knows exactly what it got to but it was overfired for 6-- maybe because it was so sparsely packed?
My black/white spiral mugs seem like they're just gonna bloat under glaze in there. I tried clear glaze on a couple test ones and they bloated, so I imagine both the flux in the glaze and the high temp did that? Maybe they need a longer bisque? I should shatter one to check for carbon coring, but also when I have my own kiln I can play with firing temps.
The studio clear glaze over non-Night spiral ware was full of bubbles, not big bubbles you can feel but tiny bubbles that make it cloudy. Honestly it looks like a deliberate effect it's so intense, like foam almost with a smooth surface, but I want to be able to see the swirls and not the glaze. I'll have to experiment with that on my own.
My Georgie's clays turned out nice. The pioneer dark is a good brown colour but it's hard on glazes. One of the two reds, the hardest one to work, is absolutely gorgeous. That's the one I labelled mazama. The other is more orange and I've labelled it dundee. I may have switched labels accidentally? Though these clays do a lot of s-cracking and need very careful drying the red and the brown are very pretty and maybe worth keeping, especially since they seem to vitrify well.
Night clay remains magic in the way it metallic spots.
Coffee clay is a nice solid workhorse, as is m300 and m370.
I did very few glazes in various combinations; I'd been putting Spectrum texture chowder from the studio on my rims but this time it peeled a lot, which led to crawling. However it stayed on over the studio's plum and led to some gorgeous orange-over-grey-purple runs. I wouldn't have thought those would be attractive colours but they're actually lovely imbolc colours. Some nice standard opal/seafoam colours where they didn't jump off the pot.
The studio had made up five glazes we'd never used before and one we had. We added too much water to most since they seem to be allergic to checking specific gravity there, but the tests turned out nice if a little thin. A little more work on them and they should be very nice: bailey's red 2, pike's purple, oldforge floating rutile, oldforge misty forest, cedar hill white, and the classic licorice. I'm looking forward to using them and to having big buckets of them once we figure out water percentages. We'd also like to do about 5 more glazes, will be fun to have those. The glaze-making process was great, there are definitely a couple people at the studio who can mix them up on their own now.
I'd further tested some opulence glazes I'd bought dried. The instructions said to add "4.5lbs water or 2.5 kg water" which... are not the same thing. I added 2kg water and they turned out nice, maybe a hair thin but decent coverage and nice breaking on my carved mugs. This may have been the end of my long-suffering immersion blender; it's probably time to get two more, one for the kitchen and one for hobbies.
So, fairly good. Now I have to think about how I want to use all these glazes, which direction I want to go in for shape and materials for what I make to glaze, and what I want to make for my home studio glazes when my materials and later kiln arrive.
But, tired. It took me several hours to write this and there's more to think about.
In addition I realized that in the time I've been doing forestry, no one's actually asked me a question about the state of the forests, though many many people have shared strong opinions on what should be done. It made me more tired. Oh well.
Kiln openings very interesting.
There were no issues with the bisque kiln, whatever weird loud cracking noises I heard was I guess normal.
The glaze kiln opening was very interesting. The kiln had fired to a pretty high cone 6, we didn't have a cone 7 witness cone so who knows exactly what it got to but it was overfired for 6-- maybe because it was so sparsely packed?
My black/white spiral mugs seem like they're just gonna bloat under glaze in there. I tried clear glaze on a couple test ones and they bloated, so I imagine both the flux in the glaze and the high temp did that? Maybe they need a longer bisque? I should shatter one to check for carbon coring, but also when I have my own kiln I can play with firing temps.
The studio clear glaze over non-Night spiral ware was full of bubbles, not big bubbles you can feel but tiny bubbles that make it cloudy. Honestly it looks like a deliberate effect it's so intense, like foam almost with a smooth surface, but I want to be able to see the swirls and not the glaze. I'll have to experiment with that on my own.
My Georgie's clays turned out nice. The pioneer dark is a good brown colour but it's hard on glazes. One of the two reds, the hardest one to work, is absolutely gorgeous. That's the one I labelled mazama. The other is more orange and I've labelled it dundee. I may have switched labels accidentally? Though these clays do a lot of s-cracking and need very careful drying the red and the brown are very pretty and maybe worth keeping, especially since they seem to vitrify well.
Night clay remains magic in the way it metallic spots.
Coffee clay is a nice solid workhorse, as is m300 and m370.
I did very few glazes in various combinations; I'd been putting Spectrum texture chowder from the studio on my rims but this time it peeled a lot, which led to crawling. However it stayed on over the studio's plum and led to some gorgeous orange-over-grey-purple runs. I wouldn't have thought those would be attractive colours but they're actually lovely imbolc colours. Some nice standard opal/seafoam colours where they didn't jump off the pot.
The studio had made up five glazes we'd never used before and one we had. We added too much water to most since they seem to be allergic to checking specific gravity there, but the tests turned out nice if a little thin. A little more work on them and they should be very nice: bailey's red 2, pike's purple, oldforge floating rutile, oldforge misty forest, cedar hill white, and the classic licorice. I'm looking forward to using them and to having big buckets of them once we figure out water percentages. We'd also like to do about 5 more glazes, will be fun to have those. The glaze-making process was great, there are definitely a couple people at the studio who can mix them up on their own now.
I'd further tested some opulence glazes I'd bought dried. The instructions said to add "4.5lbs water or 2.5 kg water" which... are not the same thing. I added 2kg water and they turned out nice, maybe a hair thin but decent coverage and nice breaking on my carved mugs. This may have been the end of my long-suffering immersion blender; it's probably time to get two more, one for the kitchen and one for hobbies.
So, fairly good. Now I have to think about how I want to use all these glazes, which direction I want to go in for shape and materials for what I make to glaze, and what I want to make for my home studio glazes when my materials and later kiln arrive.
But, tired. It took me several hours to write this and there's more to think about.
In addition I realized that in the time I've been doing forestry, no one's actually asked me a question about the state of the forests, though many many people have shared strong opinions on what should be done. It made me more tired. Oh well.
