I must admit, I've never been terribly disciplined about my test tiles through the years.  I'm pretty good about taking careful notes; too many times I've been burned by shoddy notes.  However, I do tend to slap those careful tests on whatever's laying around.  The result is a box full of well-documented, mismatched shapes and shards.…

I got a chance to try one last winter at MIY Ceramics and Glass in Hollywood, Florida, and knew I wanted one of my own. 

This is set up to make a platter or shallow bowl with a mouth 12" long by 8" wide. The depth is 1 3/8". The mold sections slide in pairs allowing you to set any size from 4" x 4" up to 14" x 14".…

If you ever used bentonite, you know it's a bear to mix into a glaze.  It tends to clump together in solution.  It doesn't want to play well with others.  I've tried a number of things over the years to get around this.  I thought I'd share this latest method that works for me:

I first look for the dry clay in my recipe, usually EPK.  Even if it's a small percentage of my recipe, I measure this out first, and place it in a resealable plastic bucket (I bought mine in the paint…

What I need now is a device which prevents studio members from dropping tools and valuable extruder parts in our washing tub which collects clay and heavy metals from glaze for disposal.

Going through the muck prior to disposal is always a treasure hunt.

Never Misplace a Tool Again!

by  …

Well this is pretty annoying... Just for laughs I compared a brand new K  thermocouple with the one in my kiln. The one in the kiln still has lots of metal fused at the junction so i figured that they would be pretty much the same.



SURPRISE! one read 34.6 mv and the other 36.4mv. So I thought i would try a third as a tie breaker... 33.9 mv.  The third one was just a wire probe rather than the beefy kiln probes. but it was a K. type

we're talking about a 300 deg F+ spread at…

So my buddy & I just finished the last of these urns.  They are for a certain building over in Fort Collins, Colorado. They ordered 10 of them total.  We ended up making 19 total when all was said and done & delivered. We had breakage issues and a few glaze issues that we had to work through. In the beginning I was helping throw sections, but in the end I just helped get the clay wedged and took the torch to the sections and then I fired them & glazed them.  Just glad it's all…

Anyone know of a "mother of pearl glaze" listed from Glazemixer?or one that is similar?

So the last couple of weeks during some down time at work, I was able to mix up a bunch of glazes and do some test tiles...  Now how do I get them home w/o ruining them!?!

Mission accomplished!!!!…

So Simon was in town last night, well, actually for a few nights but he gave a demo at our local supplier, Capital Ceramics.  It was quite interesting & it was fun to meet him.  Learned a few tricks even though I don't do much small stuff.  A good time was had by all!!!  jhp

I have been a hobby potter for about 18 years.  For 10 of those years I have been visually impaired.  Making things didn’t suffer much when I lost my good sight, but glazing became a recurring nightmare.  I tried brushing glaze and couldn’t tell how thick I was applying glaze or see brush marks in the glaze.  Dipping pots is OK, but everything looks commercial if a pot is dunked in a single glaze and I cannot tell when I’ve missed a place when I glaze.  Also, I like making big pots and it…

I have always tried to keep non-ceramic commentary off of the cone6pots network, but since many of you are friends, I am breaking my rule for this one bit of news.

Elaine Lewter, my wife of thirty-one years, passed away peacefully early this morning. She was the mother of our two fine sons, Jesse…

Hi There,

I'm a mature student doing an MA in Ceramics at UCLAN Preston UK. I'm interested in single fired ceramics and have devised a very simple survey and would like to ask you if there is any way you could help me get it publicised. It is available at my developing Blog, that I have to do for my course. Or I could send it to you and possibly you could put a link to it. I am more than happy to share my results with you.

My survey is at "Once fired Ceramics" at…

A year ago I watched this video of the UK ceramicist Takeshi Yasuda working in the porcelain city of Jingdezhen China.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MSxEAekY1U

As amazing as it was to see those workshops in action, I now learn that virtually all of the ceramic…

Spearmint from MC6,   applied lightly with brushing surprisingly gave this nice "worn" look that is a dirty yellow, and colored the white clay a brownish / tan color where thin also on this test pot. You can see where the glaze is thicker, that the typical spearmint color shows through.  Made a canister set and spoon rest with this. Brushing vertical v horizontal makes a large difference.…

I would like to offer a couple of tools or tips that I have figured out in the last few months. 1. when working with greenware that is just about dry the metal screen that is used for screen doors is a quick way to clean up and smooth your ware. some where between a scotchbrite and a rasp in it's efficiency.

 2) I have found a way to virtually eliminate glaze waste and clean up time for those of you that like to dip dunk and pour. I use a plastic tobogin type kids toy that I have cut a…

A few years back I had bought this used Skutt KM 818.  It was in decent shape when I bought it but after changing the elements a few times, I started to have to use way too many element pins and the bottom & sides had had a few mishaps, so when I found this L&L J18 on our local wants ads, I snagged it up.  The only place this kiln looked worn is on the top, the inside was pristine!!!  So, I took the controller & S-TC out of the Skutt, took the manual controls off the L&L and…