: ayjay - Viewing Profile

Last autumn I mixed a small (100 gram) batch of ^6 crawl glaze, a simple recipe (Magnesium Carbonate 25, Nepheline Syenite 70, Ball clay 5), it worked fine, did exactly what I wanted.

I wanted to use it today and cracked the lid open to give it a stir and it's turned a pale turquoise in colour, I'm fairly anal about not contaminating one product with another so I don't think that that's the cause.

I only have enough left for what I want for one pot, so there's no great cost involved in starting again, but should I, or is it OK to use; I do want it to fire white as it did originally.

Should I always mix this in small quantities?

I'm only a hobby potter and have never tried to sell any of my items. The community centre where I take my evening class has recently repaired a large glass fronted cabinet and we were offered this for a two week period to display and sell stuff, so about a dozen items were rooted out and taken along for sale.

After the first week over half of mine had gone (and some of the others items too), I did overprice (maybe) one item that I didn't particularly want to part with and it wasn't sold, but it feels good to know that someone was prepared to part with cash for some of my pots. B)src="http://ceramicartsdaily.org/community/public/style_emoticons/default/cool.gif">

I did however discover one possible reason for the unsold item previously mentioned - it had been displayed upside-down!

How could they?

Hopefully you can tell which way is up.


 square bowl 1.jpg (332.08K)
Number of downloads: 248

 square bowl 2.jpg (317.14K)
Number of downloads: 229

I've read that a new electric kiln should be fired empty for the first firing to oxidise the elements.

Does this need to be done with a kiln which has not been fired for three or four years?

I've finally replaced my old kiln, (it was a bit on the small side and only had a top temp of 1200°C).

My new (to me ) kiln is larger and will go to 1300° which obviously gives me more options with glazing, most importantly I can now fire properly to cone 6 (it's the new cone 10).

A lot of what I've read recently (particularly in MC6) suggests that firing down is important, the controller with the new kiln is a Stafford ST301, it's a fairly simple controller and has two programmable ramps for firing to the required temperature but doesn't appear have any means of firing down.

Is there any way to do this by reprogramming after firing is finished?

I wondered about putting in a programme after temperature is reached and the soak is finished to fire to maybe 800° and hold for a while, or even setting ramp two to a lower temperature than ramp one.

Can I input a minus figure for the temperature increase?

Does anyone understand any of that?

It's not wired up yet, I'm waiting for a sparks to get some free time, so being unable to test any of my theories I thought I'd ask first.

The group I pot with had a Raku session yesterday; a couple of years ago at one of these sessions I made a small item glazed with the a copper red glaze which has lived on a North facing windowsill ever since, the side facing the window has now faded to brown and white, the other side is not as red it was either.

I have a bowl which I like from yesterdays session in the same Copper Red glaze which I would like to keep from fading, is there anything that can be applied which will help or must it be kept out of the light?

The first two pics are the older piece, the same glaze as the newer bowl.